Ezio Manzini

Ezio Manzini is a designer, engineer, architect, educator and author. He is Professor of Design at the Politecnico di Milano, Honorary Doctor at The New School of New York (2006) and at the Goldsmiths College of London (2008), Honorary Professor at the Glasgow School of Art (2009) and Visiting Research Fellow, the University of Melbourne (2007-9). Manzini is widely regarded as one of the most influential thinkers on sustainability in Europe. His research and teaching has focused on strategic design and design for sustainability using processes of scenario building and solution development.

At the Politecnico di Milano, Manzini is Coordinator of the Unit for Research Design and Innovation for Sustainability, of the Doctorate in Industrial Design and of the Master in Strategic Design. He has been involved in several international commissions, expert panels and working groups including the Scientific Panel of the National Environmental Agency (1998 – 2000) and the Expert Group on Competitive and Sustainable Production (2000). His recent and current research activities include Creative Communities for Sustainable Lifestyles, a project developed as part of the Task Force on Sustainable Lifestyles, within the United Nations Marrakech Process. He is co-promoter, with Francois Jegou, of the Sustainable Everyday Project (SEP), an 18 country investigation of community visions for sustainable lifestyles, goods and services which has a web platform dedicated to sustainable social innovation in everyday life and an open database of promising innovation cases. 
 Presently, his main interests are design for social innovation and, in particular, the promotion of DESIS, an international network on Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability (http://www.desis-network.org ). 


Recent publications: Collaborative services. Social innovation and design for sustainability (Polidesign. Milano, 2008) and Service Design in the Age of Networks and Sustainability (in: Miettinen, S., Koivisto, M., ed., Designing Services, University of Arts and Design, Helsinki, 2009). Manzini’s writings are so prolific (even in English) that a NSW project associated with the University of Technology Sydney has mounted a database of many of his articles (see: www.changedesign.org) . Several papers can also be found in: http://www.sustainable-everyday.net