Hosted by Interface Italy during Milan design week, “Sustainability as a Culture: a female vision of design, architecture, the city and entrepreneurship” brought together a stellar panel of speakers, women from different backgrounds in the design sector, to share their thoughts and experiences about the culture of sustainability.
The panel included Bettina Bolten, a biophilic design consultant, Elena Caregnato, design principal at Unispace Milan and WOD Italy core group member, Alida Catella, CEO at Coima Image, Kari Pei, VP Global Product Design at Interface, Marina Salamon, Founder holding Alchimia and Elena Stoppioni, President at Save the Planet. The talk was moderated by Francesco Schianchi, professor of Antropodesign at the Polytechnic University of Milan.
Below are some key thoughts from the panel:
Marina Salamon: “The world knows through social media how we live and what we buy so there is no room for green washing and no future for those who fake it.”
Alida Catella: “Women have the courage and the enthusiasm to go against the grain, to change and to transform.
Elena Stoppioni: “If the history of the world is shown as one year, the industrial revolution arrives at the last two seconds of the year- where we’ve created a lot of damage! By educating women in third world countries we have the possibility to decrease carbon footprint enormously.”
Bettina Bolten: “We need to wear the spaces like our skin.”
Elena Caregnato: “We need spaces that make us feel good but also different settings for the different ways we live and work. We need to understand what makes our people feel good and be healthy.”
Kari Pei: “It’s called ‘Mother Nature’ – mothers are problem solvers. We are reclaiming some of the mistakes we made in the past- like creating too much waste. We are experiencing a renaissance in product design, using natural materials, biodegradable or using waste as a resource to create products, so it’s a very exciting time to be a product designer.”
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