Nordes – Nordic Design Research – is a network of people interested in design research and participating in the Nordes conferences, the Nordes Summer schools or other Nordes activities. Nordes is an open network that started with the first Nordic Design Research Conference in Copenhagen 2005. In addition to organising the bi-annual Nordes conferences and Summer schools Nordes promotes the publication and dissemination of design research through the Nordes Digital Archive. The Nordes board is responsible for the program of the upcoming conference and also for all activities between conferences. The board consists of people from all Nordic countries, elected at each Nordes conference. The next Nordes conference – Engaging Artefacts – will be held in Oslo in 2009.
The third Nordic Design Research Conference, NORDES’09: Engaging Artefacts will take place in Oslo, Norway, from 30 August to 1 September 2009 and will be hosted by The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, AHO, in collaboration with The University of Oslo. The program includes paper presentations, workshops, tutorials, design cases, an exhibition, a doctoral consortium as well as lively social gatherings.
Keynotes: Lizbeth Goodman (founder and director of SMARTlab Digital Media Institute and the MAGIC Multimedia & Games Innovation Centre, Gamelab and PLAYroom), Mark Cameron Burry (director of Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL) at RMIT, Melbourne, Australia) and Lavrans Løvlie (founding member of Livework). For further details, see the conference program.
Design research aims to provide new insights to the ways in which we understand – and do – design. The scope of the conference reaches beyond the traditional design disciplines and includes other research areas with mutual interest in design research and engaging artefacts. NORDES ‘09 directs its interest towards the diversity, challenges and emerging practices and understandings of design. The conference theme reflects a range of issues that characterize design and design research today.
Confronted with the increasingly complex problems of our times, design should engage in new ways of thinking. Design objects are characterized by their form, aesthetics, functionality, materials as well as social, political and cultural codings. How do and might designers, and educators and researchers of design respond to these different perspectives in design? How can designers respond to the life cycle of artefacts? How can designers be better at designing artefacts for performability and sustainability? How do designers and researchers develop ways of researching knowledges, skills, theories, methods, intuition and passion in design practices?
In addressing these many issues, the Engaging Artefacts conference includes the following themes:
- Consumption: We invite critical perspectives on the increasing number and diversity of artefacts and their creative design but also use and abuse in global economy
- Production: Critical perspectives on the complexity, interrelations and consequences of production
- Technology: new forms given by new materials – and new materials developed to enable new forms
- Interactivity: performance and system oriented thinking regarding the interaction between artefacts, material systems, environments and users
- Politics: the role of artefacts in shaping alternative futures especially addressing accessibility, sustainability, poverty and democracy
So as to fully take up the theme Engaging Artefacts, we invite a range of contributions: full research papers, presentations of design cases, artefacts for exhibition, tutorials and workshops. Papers may cover experimental and exploratory research approaches to design and the production of knowledge. Submitted contributions are subject to an anonymous peer-review process. Accepted contributions will be published electronically on the conference website prior to the conference and in the conference proceedings.
Type of submissions
- Research papers (full paper, max 10 p)
- Exploratory papers (max 4 p)
- Doctoral consortium (max 4 p proposal)
- Design cases (max 2 p proposals)
- Artefacts for exhibition (max 2 p proposals)
- Tutorials (max 2 p proposals)Workshops (max 2 p proposals)
Timeline
- 23 February 2009: Deadline all contributions (submissions closed: NB full paper submissions required and not just abstracts)
- 2 April 2009: Feedback to authors and organisers with suggestions for revision (provisional acceptances)
- 1 June 2009: Final paper submissions uploaded to website (accepted papers)
- 30 August – 1 September 2009: Conference in Oslo
To read the call and program, please see the conference system site.