Ezio Manzini gave a lecture yesterday at Central Saint Martins. He is one of the important figures, researching design futures from the perspective of social and environmental sustainability. I was impressed by the way he was presenting his thoughts. So clear, so simple and honest. He used everyday life experience (objects) for explaining big things which made the lecture very understandable and imaginative.

He stressed out the importance of consistent minorities within and outside design practice that are opening up spaces for practicing new set of values like quality of relations (interactions), quality of slowness (time), quality of human scale (scale), the quality of well done (work) and the quality of the context (place). Moving from mechanical towards the ecological model of our understanding, he defends the importance of complexity and multitude (which functions within a certain limit).

He also mentioned few authors worth reading: Richard Sennett (Together and Craftsman), Victor Margolin, Latour.

At the end of the lecture, some nice Italian wine was served (which I hardly appreciate while staying in London), closing monday night into a lovely package of inspirational experience.