Professionals and academics from a variety of disciplines will gather this weekend to discuss their own approaches to environmental and humanitarian solutions through design at a conference called "A Better World By Design." The engineering-design conference - a student-led joint effort between Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design - will bring together leaders in engineering, economics and design to share their ideas about sustainability and technology in the Third World.
Members of Brown's Engineers Without Borders, along with students in Respond Design, RISD's forum for sustainability, hope to increase awareness about how design technology can be used to improve current global issues such as climate change, pollution, world hunger and basic sanitation, according to the conference's Web site.
"We kind of just want to open peoples' eyes to the way that they can use their skills to reach out to other people they might not think about," said Andrea Jones '10, one of the co-coordinators of the conference and a member of EWB. "One of the goals is to bring to light the way that design technology can be used to make the world better."
The conference, initially intended as a lecture series, will bring representatives of different disciplines to campus in order to foster "broad discussion," said Steve Daniels '09, another co-coordinator of the event.
But because the event brings many development topics together, the event will connect the wide variety of design solutions, he said.
In addition to 12 panels discussing issues ranging from social design to urban housing and workshops covering topics such as how to build structures with bamboo, the conference will include four speaker sessions, Daniels said.
The sessions will address topics such as shifting business landscapes, design technology in the Third World and environmentally responsible solutions to current issues.
Many of the speakers are already looking to global solutions that combine sustainability with design, said Sharon Langevin '09, another co-coordinator of the event. But the conference, she said, will unite these efforts by forming a network between the two universities and the leaders of these developmental disciplines.
Conference coordinators are also planning to launch an initiative at the three-day conference called "Better By Design."
This initiative, Daniels said, will create catalogs of videos and online discussions, promote new development projects on campus, create courses related to the concept of sustainability and establish a seed fund for grants and projects both in the Brown community and in Rhode Island.
Because Rhode Island, and Providence especially, is home to many professional designers, Brown is an ideal location for the conference, Jones said.
She added that many people in the development disciplines regard Providence as "a design Mecca."
The conference, which has 300 registered guests, including around 80 professionals and academics, will also feature two keynote speakers.
