From June 2nd to 8th, 2015, Cumulus Milan 2015 Conference was held at Polytechnic University of Milan.

Cumulus is the International Association of Universities and Colleges of Art, Design and Media, with a membership of over 200 universities and colleges worldwide. D&I is its key member in China. Prof. LOU Yongqi, Dean of D&I as well as Vice President of Cumulus, attended the Milan 2015 Conference.

With the theme “The Virtuous Circle”, Cumulus Conference Milan 2015 included several subjects for discussion, namely, Nurturing, Experimenting/Prototyping, Incubating/Scaling, Communicating/Disseminating, Envisioning and Training/Educating. The papers respectively written by D&I faculty MA Jin, NI Minqing, Davide Fassi, Francesca Valsecchi and REN Lisha were included in the conference proceedings, and some D&I teachers made thesis statement at the conference.

The subject of Training/Educating was divided into several sessions, including Paradigms of Design, Emerging Technologies and the Future of Design Education, Interdisciplinarity and Innovation, Exploring New Teaching Methods, Design Education Case Studies. D&I teacher MA Jin presented her paper Meaning Making and the Expanding Scope of Design in Paradigms of Design session. Starting with the framework of the ongoing Fundamentals of Design course for freshman in D&I, this paper discussed the relationship between design as a meaning making manner and the structure of the expanding scope of design. MA Jin probed into the difference among the “meaning making” metaphor, which brings into light the essence of design, the “problem-solving” metaphor and the “reflective dialogue” metaphor. Her paper also explored potential methods in understanding and dealing with design that has ever-expanding intension and extension.

D&I lecturer NI Minqing presented her paper A Curatorial Proposal for Envisioning Contemporary Chinese Architecture at the “Envisioning” parallel session. D&I teacher REN Lisha and her student SHA Sha also made statement of their paper New Challenges and New Strategies of Developing Traditional Handcrafts at the conference. Focused on the development of traditional crafts in contemporary context, this paper proposed the idea that a new development strategy combining e-waste and handicraft was a helpful attempt towards sustainable design.

Apart from making thesis statement, D&I faculties and students also attended other related activities.

On June 6th, D&I faculties participated in the book launch event and lecture held by Prof. Ezio Manzini for his new book Design, When Everybody Designs at Design Library Milano. In his speech, Prof. Manzini talked about how to reinterpret the value of design discipline in an era when everybody designs and social mass is encouraged. Prof. Manzini argued that, given the background of social innovation, nowadays design, which had gone through the stage of “designing for the community” and “designing with the community”, was giving shape to a new culture. In the following discussion, Dean LOU was invited to join in the Q&A session. Prof. Lou believed that design methods and process could be changeable while design should be defined by its mission as well rather than merely by the tools and methods designers used. This point of view stroke a sympathetic chord with Prof. Manzini’s stress on cultural return. Prof. Manzini pointed out that, after decades of development, a clear consensus upon the importance of design thinking has taken shape in the domain of design and beyond. However, confronted with the crises in contemporary world, emerging design brought forth by him called for heterogeneity that could supersede monotonous limited understanding -- we should tell the story of our own, create new culture and enrich the dialogue in an original way.

Besides, the project “Open Your Kitchen” jointly completed by teacher NI Minqing and graduate student TAO Yinan was put on display at the “Design to Feed the World” Exhibition at Fabbrica del Vapore, Milan. This exhibition presented 100 research and practice projects designed by 50 member colleges of Cumulus, covering 5 subjects, namely, “History of Humankind, History of Food”, “Abundance of Food: A Paradox of Contemporary Time”, “The Future of Food”, “Sustainable Food = Equitable World”, and “Taste is Knowledge”.