Lecture Summary

Ten years have passed since my first visit to Japan to present the Hinamatsuri project, fourteen since I had the privilege of first meeting Professor Julia Cassim, at that time while she was at the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design (RCA). That meeting in July 2010 and my experience with Professor and great friend Julia Cassim would end up changing my perspective and approach to design and influenced the work that will be presented in this Lecture. I returned to Kyoto following Julia’s invitation to document the Textile Summer School (KIT, 2019) and this immersion in Kyotango silk production resulted in the RUFO project, which was part of the ALTERNATIVE FUTURES exhibition, which was shown during the pandemic in 2020.

This Lecture will focus on analysing participatory and co-creative methodologies in Design Project and Research adopted over the last few years, which critically seek to respond to the complexity of each context and challenge. While the Hinamatsuri project required a tripartite combination: the territory and the materialisation of unknown imaginary(s), the construction of a narrative of coexistence between two cultures and the bringing together of a group of unlikely participants; the RUFO project aimed to respond to the dialogue between Identity and Territory, with the purpose of enhancing Kyotango’s silk surplus in an interpretation of the historical encounter between Portugal and Japan translated into a combination of traditional techniques.

In this sense, it will be recognised that the Diversity of People is the result of the Diversity of Knowledge and that inclusion can lie in bringing to the centre of the project those whom society puts on the margins, investing in Human Capital, focusing on what makes each of us stronger and reducing what puts us at a disadvantage in a given context. Thinking about more equitable and inclusive societies leads Design to the exercise of decentralisation, which consequently implies a more careful analysis of materials, resources, processes, methodologies, technology and People in the production of new artefacts – perhaps this takes us to Conscious Design. This is Julia Cassim’s legacy, which will remain in the most varied places in the world, in all the designers who had the chance to get to know her and to see her charismatic dynamics in all the projects she was involved in, and I have the pleasure of being one of them.

photo©Rita França

Lígia Lopes is a Portuguese industrial designer graduate with a PhD in Design from the Faculty of Architecture of Lisbon. She is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Design at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto and Director of the Master’s Degree in Industrial and Product Design. Lígia is a member of The Research Institute for Design, Media and Culture [ID+] group, in the HEAD – Health + Design Lab unit and belongs to the ADU Ambassadors group, Advanced Research Unit of ALMA MATER STUDIORUM – University of Bologna, Italy; since the beginning of 2024 she’s also a member of Association Iberoamerica Diseña.

Ligia has over 20 years of experience teaching Project Design at different universities. Apart from her teaching experience in Portugal, she has had experiences as a visiting professor in Spain, Italy, Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Chile. In her work as a professor, she has collaborated directly with Portuguese companies and industry and with the community and organisations, allowing students to have a direct relationship with the labour market and establishing partnerships – in particular in the footwear industry, urban and interior furniture, wood furniture, new materials development, design of new domestic appliances, as well as in social institutions and local government organisations.

For the past few years, she has worked on participatory design approaches that place value on processes and people by actively involving less visible or marginalised groups. In terms of research, she has been involved in projects that include and give visibility to the participation of peripheral groups (such as people with dementia and caregivers, people with functional diversity, autism, Down Syndrome, the elderly, children with special educational needs and people with Parkinson’s disease) seeking to benefit the designer’s perspective as a connoisseur and translator of people’s expectations and needs.

Due to the proximity with the aging population and the people with dementia, she became interested in the preservation of memory (of people) by artefacts, by the emotional factors between people and objects and by the (slow) TIME factor. Through the practice of working with and for people, she has been reflecting on the beauty of imperfection (both bodies and objects) opening space for the bridge between empirical knowledge and artificial intelligence, for cultural and intergenerational mixtures and synaesthetic design.

Her activist stance in design is expressed through a conscious choice of process and attention to the product cycle, to ensure that it is more human and transparent. Her personal project, CANHOTA, responds to the need for projects rooted in and sustained by design ethics committed to developing products, services and strategies through Conscious Design.