Design across Time - 20th Design Principles and Practices conference

16/03/2026

The poster session sparked lively exchanges as participants gathered around presenters to discuss their work.
The session featured work by Alisha Sinha, Donald Tarallo, Jonda McNair, Janine Murta, Gabrielle Warriner, Chloe Falls, Tridib Ray, Jānis Ķesa, Melina Misri, Maji Rhee, and Jenn Liv, with topics ranging from sustainability in design education, typography, and picturebook endpapers to pandemic iconography, hidden communication systems like the hobo code, matchbox design history, student engagement in postgraduate education, relational infrastructures for social health, spatial perception, legal design in civil procedure, and visual explorations of the Sonoran Desert.
The diversity of themes reflected the breadth of the Design Principles and Practices community — connecting research across education, society, visual culture, and professional practice.
Moments like these highlight one of the core strengths of the conference: creating space for direct dialogue, curiosity, and shared discovery around design’s evolving role in the world.

The Design across Time - 20th Design Principles and Practices conference held on 25-27 February 2026 at Sapienza Università di Roma is part of Common Ground Research Networks / Design Principles and Practices Research Network

(photos by Teodora Ivkov)

09/03/2026

What does it mean to build a contemporary design collection today?

At our conference, Lorenza Baroncelli offered a keynote that opened this question in a powerful way — not by treating design as a fixed category, but as a living field shaped by time, politics, institutions, material cultures, and changing social needs.

Drawing on her curatorial work at MAXXI - Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo and previous experiences at Triennale Milano, Baroncelli reflected on figures such as Enzo Mari and Riccardo Dalisi, whose practices challenged conventional boundaries between art, design, architecture, education, and social engagement. Through these examples, she showed how design can act not only as production of objects, but also as critique, provocation, pedagogy, and cultural memory.

Her keynote, Theories and Practices for a Contemporary Design Collection, also explored how museums and public institutions can respond to the present: by rethinking categories, collecting new forms of design, questioning systems of value, and addressing accessibility, sustainability, and inclusion in curatorial practice.

Particularly resonant with our 2026 focus on Design across Time, the talk invited us to consider how design is preserved, interpreted, and activated across generations — and how institutions can help shape more thoughtful futures through what they choose to collect, exhibit, and make visible.

The keynote was introduced by Angela Giambattista.

The Design across Time - 20th Design Principles and Practices conference held on 25-27 February 2026 at Sapienza Università di Roma is part of Common Ground Research Networks / Design Principles and Practices Research Network

05/03/2026

The Local Practitioners plenary offered a grounded, Rome-rooted perspective on what design practice means when it engages directly with communities, technologies, and urban contexts.
Manuela Tognoli (Portuense201 / Label201) shared the story of transforming a former family dairy farm in Rome’s Marconi district into Portuense201, a small creative ecosystem hosting studios, exhibitions, residencies, and talks. Conceived not as a real estate operation but as a cultural regeneration project, the space has gradually built a network of artists, designers, and neighbors, contributing to the revival of a historically industrial area.
Stefano Capezzone (Spazio Chirale) presented the work of the Rome-based design research lab that emerged from the maker movement, exploring how digital fabrication can reshape craftsmanship and artistic production. Among the examples discussed was the collaboration with kinetic artist Maurizio Mochetti, where Chirale restored and technologically upgraded artworks affected by obsolescence—and even realized a conceptual piece from 1967 that technology had not yet made possible at the time.
Antonio Grillo (Tangity by NTT Data / Politecnico di Milano) reflected on the role of design within complex technological organizations. From experimental products like the Silente chair, which creates an acoustic privacy bubble, to service design work with Acea on smart water management systems—awarded the Compasso d’Oro—his talk emphasized design’s responsibility in navigating uncertainty, fostering inclusion, and translating advanced technologies into meaningful solutions.
Across these perspectives, the session highlighted how design practice can actively shape communities, infrastructures, and cultural ecosystems.
The session was moderated by Luca D’Elia (Sapienza University of Rome).

The Design across Time - 20th Design Principles and Practices conference held on 25-27 February 2026 at Sapienza Università di Roma is part of Common Ground Research Networks / Design Principles and Practices Research Network

04/03/2026

The second keynote speaker, Diletta Huyskes, researcher at the University of Milan and co-founder of Immanence, took us on a journey through the social dimensions of design, exploring the connections between everyday practices and emerging technologies, highlighting how design can influence ethics, inclusion, and the ways we imagine and build society.

Through historical and contemporary examples, the talk showed how design decisions shape social outcomes. From bicycles that excluded women, to bridges limiting mobility for poorer communities, to AI systems in public services reproducing discrimination, the keynote highlighted how technologies can silently embed political choices and reinforce inequality when design assumptions go unquestioned.

“Again, some STS scholars will say that the design of such an artifact, it's not a neutral one, and we cannot put the responsibility out to users on how to use it. Design is never neutral, many times it's amazing, it's really nice, others is not. But we can scrutinize it, we can review it, we can check it, we can open black boxes, we can look inside them, look what the intentions are, and with your help as designers, We can make it better.”

“And through such scrutiny, the data algorithms, AI systems we use every day and run in the background of our daily lives become visible and tangible, even if they're immaterial. So the goal for me is to try to use it and try to think about it as a microwave, a washing machine, or whatever more easy and physical we have in mind that could help us envisioning their consequences. And once we can see the technology clearly, we can also see how it can be used for the common good and how it can contribute to a better society.”

The keynote was introduced by Viktor Malakuczi

The Design across Time - 20th Design Principles and Practices conference held on 25-27 February 2026 at Sapienza Università di Roma is part of Common Ground Research Networks / Design Principles and Practices Research Network

02/03/2026

Talking Circles are a special moment in DPP conferences, always scheduled in the first parallel session just after the opening plenary, when authors come together and discuss their positions around the six recurring conference themes as well as the year’s special focus, creating space for open dialogue and shared reflection.
This year’s Talking Circles were facilitated by colleagues from the Italian design research community representing all major universities involved in the discipline:

Design Education
- Ivo Caruso, University of Napoli "Federico II", Italy
- Erik Ciravegna, Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, Italy
Design in Society
- Chiara Olivastri, University of Genoa, Italy
- Francesca Valsecchi, Tongji University, College of Design and Innovation, China
Design Management and Professional Practice
- Amina Pereno, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
Designed Objects
- Daniele Busciantella Ricci, University of Florence, Italy
- Chiara Scarpitti, University of Campania "L.Vanvitelli", Italy
Visual Design
- Monica Pastore, Polytechnic University of Bari, Italy
- Annapaola Vacanti, Università Iuav di Venezia, Italy
Architectonic, Spatial, and Environmental Design Practice
- Serena Del Puglia, University of Palermo, Italy
- Chiara Lecce, Politecnico di Milano, Italy

The Talking Circle on the Special Focus, Design across Time, was moderated by conference chairs Angela Giambattista and Viktor Malakuczi

The Design across Time - 20th Design Principles and Practices conference held on 25-27 February 2026 at Sapienza Università di Roma is part of Common Ground Research Networks / Design Principles and Practices Research Network

01/03/2026

What does twenty years of design dialogue look like? At our 20th Anniversary Plenary Panel, past Chairs of the International Conference on Design Principles and Practices gathered to reflect on the journey of a community that has travelled across continents, cultures, and crises.

Moderated by Lorenzo Imbesi, the session started with Phillip Kalantzis Cope recalling the origins of the conference series and the first editions in London, Miami, Berlin, Illinois, Los Angeles.
Then Loredana Di Lucchio remembered how the first Roman edition (2011, Useful and Futile) was born from the engagement with DPP since the beginning. Louise St. Pierre joined online to talk about the Vancouver conference (2014, Design as Collective Intelligence) and Luiza Novaes about Design Transforming Society in Rio de Janeiro (2016), while Luigi Ferrara shared a video message on the continued relevance of “Design for the Global Village” (2017).

Next up, Mariia Zolotova, as part of the organizational committee at Saint Petersburg (2019) shared nostalgic thoughts about the edition “Design + Context”. Entering in the Covid era, Philip remembered the turbulent 2020 edition of Brooklin, then Jessica Ochoa Zamarripa joined online to talk about “Towards a (Design) New Deal” (2021, Monterrey).
Two more of the recent DPP chairs reached Rome: Cátia Rijo, who shared her long journey from dreaming about a DPP at Lisbon to realizing it in 2023 (New Agendas for Design: Principles of Scale, Practices of Inclusion). Finally, representing last year’s Singapore edition, Lidya Chrisfens (Thinking, Learning, Doing: Plural Ways of Design) highlighted the importance of expanding the disciplinary debate globally.

A few themes have remained constant: interdisciplinarity beyond silos, design as collective intelligence, a truly international, open, horizontal community. Research not just to publish — but to transform the world.
What emerged from the conversation was not nostalgia, but continuity of friendships, collaborations, and the sense that DPP is more than a conference - it is a network that grows over time. From early debates about where research happens, to post-pandemic reflections on inclusion and pluriversality, to today’s urgencies, such as climate, inequality, AI, energy transition - design’s responsibility has only expanded.

The Design across Time - 20th Design Principles and Practices conference on 25-27 February 2026 at Sapienza Università di Roma is part of Common Ground Research Networks / Design Principles and Practices Research Network

28/02/2026

With his keynote titled “We Are the Rain: Epistemic Design When There Is No Outside”, Antonio Scarponi (Founder of Conceptual Devices and Co-founder of the Institute for Spatial Thinking) offered a profound reflection on the responsibility of design as a transformative force: one that does not simply observe the conditions of human life, but actively shapes them, sometimes through seemingly small gestures that can unfold radical changes on a planetary scale over time.

“We are not concerned explaining why it rains or in which direction the wind is blowing, because through design, We are not simply exposed to those forces.
We are those forces. We are the wind. We are the rain.
Design does not observe conditions. It produces them.
Design does not describe the world as it is. It intervenes in the relationship that makes the world what it is.
In this sense, design is not a descriptive nor a normative form of knowledge. It is a transformative one.
It operates epistemically by altering reality, by changing how things relate to one another, where space is not a neutral background, but a condition continuously produced through relations.
And this implies an epistemic shift where design operates, a mode of inquiry oriented over the transformation of a threshold between the world as it is and the world as it could be.
This process cannot be linear. It has to be recursive. It unfolds. in this condition through three interrelated epistemic fields.
Not steps, not phases, fields. Envisioning.
That allow us to imagine and explore alternative conditions, projects.”

The keynote was introduced by Angela Giambattista.

The Design across Time - 20th Design Principles and Practices conference held on 25-27 February 2026 at Sapienza Università di Roma is part of Common Ground Research Networks / Design Principles and Practices Research Network

26/02/2026

We launched the 20th edition of the Design Principles and Practices conference, hosted again after fifteen years at Sapienza Università di Roma, with opening remarks from Prof. Orazio Carpenzano, Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, who shared an inspiring reflection on the significance of time, a concept equally relevant, if differently so, for both architecture and design.
Lorenzo Imbesi then took the floor as Design Principles and Practices Research Network co-chair, also representing Cumulus Association and SID, the Italian Society of Design.
Phillip Kalantzis Cope, Chief Social Scientist of the Common Ground Research Networks, greeted the audience and highlighted the recently redesigned CG Scholar platform.
Conference co-chairs Angela Giambattista and Viktor Malakuczi presented the conference venue at Valle Giulia and the intensive three-day program, along with the conference's special focus: Design across Time, a theme inspired by the 20-year history of the DPP conference series and aimed at speculating on how the discipline might evolve over the next 20 years.

18/02/2026

The Local Practitioners plenary is a recurring moment within the DPP conferences, spotlighting professionals from the host city and connecting their work to our international community of scholars and researchers. For the Rome edition, we will welcome Italian designers and creative leaders working in applied research, urban initiatives, cultural production, inclusive design, and interdisciplinary innovation. Through short presentations and a joint Q&A, the session opens a conversation between practice and academia, reflecting on the specificities of the Italian context and its contribution to broader design debates.

The session brings together Michele Franzese, founder of Rome Future Week; Manuela Tognoli, architect and curator of the Portuense201 creative district; Stefano Capezzone from the design research and digital fabrication lab Spazio Chirale; and Antonio Grillo, Executive Design Director at Tangity by NTT Data and educator in Inclusive Design. The session is moderated by Luca D’Elia, researcher at Sapienza University of Rome.

Michele Franzese is a Creative Director, entrepreneur, and event maker. For over twenty years he has supported companies through Scai Comunicazione. Author of books on event making and entrepreneurship, he teaches Startup and Spin-Offs at Link Campus University in Rome. He curates formats such as RomeFutureWeek®, rethinking urban experiences and the relationship between citizens, business, and innovation.
Manuela Tognoli, Architect and curator of the Portuense201 creative district in Rome, where she founded Label20, a gallery for contemporary art and design. She works across residential and commercial interiors, integrating research on materials, color, and custom furnishings with technical rigor.
Stefano Capezzone presents the Rome-based design research lab Chirale, working at the intersection of material practice, digital fabrication, and critical design. His work explores sustainable and alternative production models.
Antonio Grillo, Tangity, is a design leader with over 20 years in product and service design. He leads Inclusive Design at Politecnico di Milano and advocates design ethics and innovation across industries.

05/02/2026

07/01/2026

We are pleased to introduce our keynote speaker, Antonio Scarponi (). Founder of Conceptual Devices (http://conceptualdevices.com/), he engages design as a critical practice. His work examines how design produces strategies, imaginaries, and forms of knowledge that expose contemporary social and cultural conditions.
His work has been published in international journals and platforms including Architectural Design, Domus, Abitare, Wired, Fast Company – Design, Designboom, and Design Habitat, and has been exhibited in international institutions such as the Venice Architecture Biennale and the MAK Vienna Biennale for Change. In 2008, his work received the Curry Stone Design Prize for pioneering socially engaged design practices.
He has taught and lectured internationally since 2005 and has been teaching at the Zurich University of the Arts since 2013, where he is part of the MA Cultural Critique and Curatorial Studies. In 2023, he co-founded the Institute for Spatial Thinking (http://www.spatialthinking.institute/) to advance spatial design practices beyond disciplinary boundaries.

Stay tuned for further speakers of the 20th anniversary DPP conference, focused on the theme Design across Time!
Conference info at https://designprinciplesandpractices.com/2026-conference
Late Proposal Deadline is set to 25 January 2026.
Call for papers: https://designprinciplesandpractices.com/2026-conference/call-for-papers

Common Ground Research Networks
Design Principles and Practices Research Network