Parsons School of Design

Diwa Sankofa

Camille Steele, Micah Wong

It is the charge of the Biodesigner to materialize the future. This responsibility is a sacred one and must be revered so as to conjure a just, bountiful, and sustainable future. Diwa Sankofa is a communal practice which works to orient Biodesign around the sacred by ritualizing the steps of the making process. Channeled through the creation of weavings and group foraging exercises, we observe how functional practice becomes ritual when charged with intentions to create for a positive future. Gleaning from the Filipino and Black American ancestral tradition, we name gratitude, patience, and subsistence as tenets of creating in community. Biodesign asks more of us than the functional and pragmatic, as designers of the future we must go beyond the modern strategies of science and excel towards a practice which honors the knowledges of those who’ve worked with the Earth for millennia.

The Ooze

Erin Earthman

The Ooze challenges the biomaterials community’s constant push for innovation and asks if we are overlooking another crucial step–storytelling. The project examines how art and design can be used to tell stories about biomaterials that connect deeply with young people today through embracing the human and the sensory. This allows us to enable people to understand and appreciate pre-existing innovative materials in new ways, facilitating broader cultural impact. The work promotes an ethos of collaboration, community and imperfect people making imperfect work as a resistance to an alienating world.

Jane Pirone is an Associate Professor of Design Ecologies at Parsons School of Design. She served as Dean of the School of Design Strategies from 2015-2019 and as Director of the Communication Design program from 2006-2011. Jane’s creative and transdisciplinary practice engages with living systems, storytelling, participatory futures, and new technologies from critical, queer and post-human theoretical perspectives. Jane has been a founding member of the Datamyne Project (MYNE), the Urban Research Toolkit (URT), the urbanBIKE initiative, and YouthBike. Prior to joining Parsons, Jane was the founder/creative director of Not For Tourists, drummergirl.com, and the award winning design firm, Happy Mazza Media, working with clients such as Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, IBM, Nickelodeon, and the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center.

Barbara Adams