Liat Rogel. Design thinker & doer
I care about how design can change things: how it can bring people to live a more sustainable lifestyle. Unfortunately the common image of sustainable design in the main design fairs and publications is still of recycled brown color and a decoration of some plants and birds. If it is made from something we would have thrown away, if it is recycled, if it is brown, it is sustainable. I would really like to go beyond that image; design has much more to offer then this scenario. Somewhere in my third year of industrial design studies I took a course about design and the environment. This course has completely changed the way I thought about design. The most important thing I learned was that sometimes, there are no answers to environmental questions when it comes to certain objects. I learnt that we, as designers, should ask ourselves if we should really invest a lot of time in making ecological cars or should we ask ourselves if there is something better then a car. This shift in the way of thinking has led me to choose my specialization in “service design” in the Politecnico di Milano. in this part of my journey I met two very important people. Ezio Manzini and Anna Meroni. Anna will also mentor me as my supervisor when i'll be back to work on my PhD some years later.
Anna writes about services:
“ Design for services has, since its origins, considered the role and presence of users in the service delivery process as its main focus. Design for services generally conceives users as a resource rather than a burden or a problem. Besides being a source of insights and ideas, users have been engaged in design processes to generate more desirable and usable solutions, and to explore new collaborative service models ”
Ezio about the role of designer:
" the designer role should change in two steps: First, the departure point should be social innovation for then using ones specific skills and abilities to explore and propose new directions for products and services. The second step is to consider themselves part of the community with whom they are collaborating – to be and act as experts participating, peer to peer, with the other members of the community in the generation of promising endeavors, and the evolution of these cases toward more efficient and accessible systems"
I reach through the time dedicated to research a great experiecne and learn how to take my ego away from design and let people in. This is what I mostly do.
Publications
Cho, Rogel (2013) Urban social sustainability through the web: Using ICTs to build a community for prospective neighbors, in ICT4S conference proceedings, Zürich. Here a video from our presentation.
Gemayel, Fassi, Rogel, Seyrig, Motter (2012), The human cities toolbox – how to reclaim public space. In HUMAN CITIES, Civil Society Reclaims Public Space Cross Perspectives Based on Research, Proceedings.
Rogel, Gambarana (2012) Integration in co-housing. In id22 (Editor) CoHousing Cultures Handbook for self-organized, community-oriented and sustainable living. Jovis: Berlin.
Rogel, Corubolo (2012), HousingLab, exploring new ways of housing our cities, CUMULUS Northern worls mandate conference proceedings.
Fassi, Rogel (2012) there’s room for one more, CUMULUS Northern worls mandate conference proceedings.
Rogel, Corubolo (2012) HousingLab an innovative service design laboratory. Self managed co-housing born out of need or new ways of life? Conference proceedings, Tours.
Rogel, Corubolo (2011) Abitare meglio la città: La collaborazione tra gli abitanti come base per forme di housing sostenibili. “Casa e Cooperazione” June 2011
Rogel (2008) P-Kit, picture listening for community planning in: Changing the Change. Design, Visions, Proposals and Tools. Proceedings. Allemandi Conference press.
EU research projects
I participated in writing the proposals for the following successful European projects:
Experimentcity: European event.
Collaborative housing | diversity | sustainable cities.
In the program Europe for citizens.
Human Cities 2
Reclaiming public space
Supported by the culture program 2007-2013 of the European commission