Parsons Presents Design and Existential Risk

Series Explores Role of Design In Addressing Extreme Global Threats

First image of Earth taken from the moon

New York, November 2, 2010—As designers work to find solutions for some of today's most pressing problems, are they overlooking the catastrophic threats of the future? Parsons The New School for Design is exploring this question with Design and Existential Risk, a programming series on how design can predict, prepare for, and react to extreme global threats like resource wars, climate change, and widespread disease. Bringing together leading thinkers, designers, authors and educators, Design and Existential Risk will imagine a role for design that transcends its temporal, spatial, and disciplinary limits to counteract this unnerving future.

"Although we use very sci-fi tools, humans have evolved very little over the past thousand years," said moderator Ed Keller, associate dean of Distributed Learning and Technology at Parsons. "And as designers, we tend to think of time in years and decades rather than centuries and millennia. We do not anticipate the serious threats we face in the distant future. Through this series, we expose these gaps in human nature, and ask what we can do to reinvent ourselves and ensure the survival of our species."

Each discussion will be held from 6-8 p.m. in the Anna-Maria and Steven Kellen Auditorium, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, 66 Fifth Avenue, New York, and is free and open to the public.

• Thursday, November 4: Benjamin H. Bratton, director of the Center for Design and Geopolitics at University of California, San Diego, in conversation with McKenzie Wark, professor of Culture and Media at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts
• Friday, November 5: Elizabeth Ellsworth, associate provost for Curriculum and Learning, The New School, in conversation with Jamie Kruse, smudge studio, and David Gersten, professor of Architecture at the Cooper Union
  
• Thursday, November 11: Jeffrey Inaba, director of C-Lab, a think tank at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
  
• Monday, November 15: Keller Easterling, professor at Yale University and author of Enduring Innocence
  
• Thursday, November 18: Kazys Varnelis, director of the Network Architecture Lab at Columbia University
  
• Thursday, December 2: Mark Wigley, dean of Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, in conversation with Joel Towers, dean of Parsons The New School for Design
  
• Thursday, December 9: Michael Chen and Jason Lee of the Crisis Front Design Research lab at the Pratt Institute, in conversation with Annie Kwon and Adriana Young, of the Graduate Program in International Affairs Crisis Networks lab at The New School

For more information, please visit http://designexrisk.wordpress.com/.

Parsons The New School for Design has been a pioneer in art and design education for more than a century. Based in New York but active around the world, the school offers undergraduate and graduate programs in the full spectrum of design disciplines. Critical thinking and collaboration are at the heart of a Parsons education. A student-centered curriculum allows for both focused and interdisciplinary learning, with unparalleled internship opportunities and industry partnerships laying the groundwork for entrepreneurship and professional success. An integral part of The New School, Parsons builds on the university's legacy of progressive ideals, scholarship, and pedagogy. Parsons graduates are leaders in their respective fields, with a shared commitment to creatively and critically addressing the complexities of life in the 21st century. For more information, please visit www.newschool.edu/parsons.

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Deborah Kirschner
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