International Visitors Programme
Architect and designer Guto Requena and Joel Towers, founding partner of architectural firm SR+T, were invited by What Design Can Do invited as keynote speakers at their festival in Amsterdan, May 2018.
Towers' speech _(Re)framing the Anthropocene _was followed by an interactive workshop and brainstorm session, exploring the question 'how can we harness the power of new ideas to positively reframe the Anthropocene?'. Requena gave a workshop exploring transformative experience design and the way interactive storytelling can facilitate the shift towards a more sustainable society.
Joel Towers, founding partner of architectural firm SR+T, has been crucial to Parsons' leading position in environmental studies. He first came to Parsons in 2002 as the Director of Sustainable Design and Urban Ecology. He was the first Director of the Tishman Environment and Design Center at The New School and the Associate Provost for Environmental Studies at the university. The Tishman Center supports the university-wide Environmental Studies degrees and is unique in its approach to design-led research in tandem with historical and social inquiry, placing an emphasis on innovation within the context of cultural, economic, and ecological factors.
Guto Requena** **holds a Masters in Architecture & Urban Planning from the University of São Paulo (USP). For nine years, he was a researcher at NOMADS.USP - Center for Interactive Living Studies. In 2008 he founded Estudio Guto Requena, focusing on experimenting with digital technologies in an emotional way.
Since then, he has won several awards, lectured and exhibited around the world. One of his recent signature projects is the Dancing Pavilion for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. In his Love Project Requena makes jewellery, the shape of which is based on sensory data collected from people who were asked to tell a love story.