Parsons DESIS Lab, New York, USA

Submitted by admin on Thu, 12/15/2011 - 3:51pm

Parsons DESIS Lab, New York, USA

Address: East 16th Street, Room 1207, New York, NY 10003
Website: http://desis.parsons.edu

Institution: The New School University
Website: http://www.newschool.edu

Director:
Eduardo Staszowski
Email: staszowe@newschool.edu

Scientific Coordinators:
Lara Penin
Email: peninl@newschool.edu

Cameron Tonkinwise
Email: tonkinwc@newschool.edu

Nidhi Srnivas
Email: srinivan@newschool.edu

Eduardo Staszowski
Email: staszowe@newschool.edu

Background

The Parsons DESIS Lab is a Research Laboratory founded in 2009 in New York City at the School of Design Strategies, Parsons The New School for Design. The lab brings together faculty and students from across disciplines at The New School, led by Parsons The New School for Design and Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy. Parsons DESIS Lab is also the promoter and regional coordinator of the DESIS network chapter in the United States.

Objectives

Parsons DESIS Lab’s mission is to advance the practice and discourse of design-enabled social innovation toward more sustainable cities by:

Educating a new generation of designers equipped with the appropriate tools to act as agents of sustainable change in the private and public sectors.
Conducting research to investigate new ways in which design can promote the development of more sustainable ways of living and working.
Creating a multidisciplinary approach to Social Innovation and Sustainability focused on the intersection of Service Design, Non-profit Management, Social Entrepreneurship and Public and Urban Policy.
Promoting local projects and events with partners in New York City and regional or global programs in collaboration with other labs of the DESIS network.

Activities

In less than two years of existence Parsons DESIS Lab has developed an Area of Study in Service Design and Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability within Parsons The New School for Design; attracted significant external funding and built partnerships with leading universities and strategic design firms in the U.S. and around the world.

Primary Research Areas

Our research activities delineate a multidisciplinary approach to Social Innovation and Sustainability at the intersection of Service Design, Non-profit Management, Social Entrepreneurship and Public and Urban Policy. Some of the current lines of research are:

Designing for Collaborative Services
Designing for Sharing Strategies
Designing for Public Services Innovation

Future Programs

We are planning a new research program on citizen-driven public services starting on 2012. In addition, we will continue to explore the areas of Health Care and Social Services among others, through courses and projects.

Main Partners in the U.S.

Academic partners (DESIS USA): MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, DesignMatters and SCAD;

Sponsors: Rockefeller Foundation

Industry partners: IDEO, among others

List of Projects & Research

In November 2011, Parsons DESIS Lab completed its Rockefeller Foundation two-year funded project, ‘Amplifying Creative Communities’ with an exhibition of sustainability oriented social innovations in North Brooklyn, along with a series of service design workshops. In conjunction with this project, we co-promoted with Shareable.net the event Share NYC, a conference on the sharing economy.

In December 2011, Parsons DESIS Lab is launching the ‘Service Design Repository’, a dynamic virtual repository of papers, articles, tools, blog posts, and others resources available to the service design community worldwide.

On going initiatives include the ‘Service Design Performances’, a lecture series featuring high profile international professionals and scholars to present their work to Parsons faculty and students as well as the service design community in New York city.

Parsons DESIS Lab has already developed projects, courses and experiments in the areas of Housing, Finance, Health Care and Social Services.

Project examples