Is Design Finished? – Dematerialisation and Changing Things with Cameron Tonkinwise

Please join us! Cameron mixes philosophy, politics and design into a provocative world view of the designer's role in the future.

Pratt Studios Room 43 Thursday February 28, at 5pm
Brooklyn Campus

An ‘object’ is what gets in the way, a problem thrown in your path like a projectile (coming as it does from the Latin objectum, Greek problema)… I come across obstacles in my path; I overturn some of these obstacles in order to continue; and the objects thus overturned prove to be obstacles in themselves. The more I continue, the more I am obstructed by objects of use…Vilém Flusser

Where do all these things come from?

From designers; but why?

Why do designers keep making things?

Why do we keep making designers make more things?

Cameron Tonkinwise, is currently the director of design studies and chair of Carnegie Mellon Doctoral Studies Committee and formerly the chair of design thinking and sustainability for the School of Design Strategies. Tonkinwise was responsible for developing offerings in the areas of strategy, sustainability and service design.
Tonkinwise's primary area of research is "dematerialization design," which attempts to improve societal sustainability by lowering its materials intensity. Tonkinwise also has been active in discussions about the nature of practice and artifact-based design research.
Originally from Australia, Tonkinwise obtained his doctoral degree in continental philosophy at the University of Sydney. He was formerly the director of design studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, and has, for more than a decade, published and taught on product service systems design and collaborative consumption - two areas of design that focus on using existing resources to create new products with low environmental impact.

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