Brought to you by the Short Courses & Executive Education team at the RCA.

Currently our resilience looks to peers, local resources and communities to temper the storm. Rob and Ezio’s discussion will unpick ‘Communities of Place’, a sociality cultivating a network of relationships that, after the crisis, could evolve into hybrid communities of place. That is, communities capable of living in both the physical and the digital space. The objective shares design opportunities and a potential to embed designed resilience into communities.

Ezio Manzini

Distinguished Professor of Design for Social Innovation, Elisava-Design School and Engineering

For over two decades Professor Ezio Manzini has been working in the field of design for sustainability. Most recently, his interests have focused on social innovation, considered as a major driver of sustainable changes. In this perspective he started DESIS: an international network of schools of design, active in the field of design for social innovation and sustainability. Presently, he is a Distinguished Professor of Design for Social Innovation at Elisava-Design School and Engineering, Barcelona, Honorary Professor at the Politecnico di Milano and Guest Professor at both, Tongji (Shanghai) and Jiangnan (Wuxi) Universities.

Dr Rob Phillips

Senior Tutor, Design Products & Futures Programme, RCA

A Product Designer with eighteen years’ experience, working commercially and independently with broad experience (to date) including; five international patents, large scale manufacture with 3+ million products in retail, leading research papers, live saving fire and ballistics equipment, revolutionary material developments, user orientated proposals and involvement in design for team GB. His RCA MA students have raised in excess of £1.5 million through crowdfunding (for their projects). His PhD informed the relationship between Open Design and Citizen Science, resulting in methods taught at MIT Media Lab, Stanford, Cornell and the BBC.