Design conference focus on ‘pause and effect’

BETTER OFF FOR IT: Participants at A Better World By Design 2012, which brought together students from around country with professionals in architecture, engineering, education, research, technology and business. / COURTESY A BETTER WORLD BY DESIGN
BETTER OFF FOR IT: Participants at A Better World By Design 2012, which brought together students from around country with professionals in architecture, engineering, education, research, technology and business. / COURTESY A BETTER WORLD BY DESIGN

Within the overarching goal of creating a better world, students from Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design have organized the sixth annual conference, A Better World By Design, focused on the theme “Pause and Effect.”
“The theme is to encourage students and professionals of all backgrounds to put down the products they’ve been working with and spend three days learning new skills, meeting new people and looking at things in a new light,” said Alexander Hadik, co-chair of the conference, which runs Sept. 27-29 on the campuses of the two colleges.
A Better World By Design brings together engineers, designers, entrepreneurs, policymakers, academic leaders and students to collaborate on a limitless range of problems, policies and issues.
A team of collaborators at the conference, for instance, might design new apps for a cellphone with entrepreneurship in mind, said Hadik, a computational-biology major planning to graduate from Brown in 2015.
Stepping back from the daily routine and being immersed in the conference can have a positive long-term effect, said Hadik, who participated in two previous conferences. “It affected the way I do research. I use the design process as a problem-solving tool,” said Hadik. “If you’re stuck on an idea or problem, you break it down, ask new questions and consider possible approaches.”
The influence of an innovative group can be powerful, said Hadik, who is collaborating on organization of the student-run conference with co-chair Hannah Bebbington, a Brown University economics major.
Affiliated with Brown Engineers Without Borders, the conference spotlights speakers who are innovative in their approach to social issues, education, technology, business and design. Speakers include Daniel Feldman, who has worked with Architecture for Humanity; Alexander Eaton, CEO of Sistema Bilbolsa, who is commercializing a new small biodigester to convert organic waste into renewable energy and organic fertilizer; Juliette LaMontagne, a New York City public school teacher and Columbia University professor who works with youth and in design, education and entrepreneurship and Greg Nemes, a Rhode Island School of Design architecture graduate.
The conference will showcase the winning design in a challenge for a project that transforms the second floor and yard of the Billy Taylor House, the former home of a local youth mentor, that is now a local community center in Providence. The project aims to find the best use of space in the house in the Mount Hope neighborhood as a place to meet, educate and inspire local youth. The winning designer will work with the Billy Taylor Project to implement the design.
A Better World By Design has grown to have a national and international reach, both in speakers and conferees, with 32 colleges and universities represented last year.
The “Pause and Effect” theme encourages people to take time to consider consequences of actions to deal with major issues, such as climate change, health care or the economy, Brown University junior Anna Plumlee, the conference’s participant-experience coordinator, said in an Aug. 14 blog on the conference website.
“Pause and effect is also a call to action … a series of small, direct actions we each can make in our everyday lives to improve them,” she said. •

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