A discussion about "Networks of care" with Ezio Manzini

This year the Specializing Master in Service Design, according with the didactic plan, will provide Masterclasses, one day lectures held by an expert or Service Design guru to investigate cutting-edge topics emerging in the world of Service Design. Today we are glad to host Ezio Manzini, one of the leading Italian and world design expert, founder of DESIS, an international network working on design for social innovation and sustainability.
The Masterclass title is Networks of care – Cities, social innovation and new generation. The argument that Ezio Manzini will bring to the class starts from an analysis on the social crisis that nowadays cities are experiencing: lack of social cohesion, insufficient public services, decreasing support by traditional social forms, growing sense of loneliness. The gap between the growing demand and the shrinking offer of care is the basis of the present care crisis, in the practical but also in the psychological sphere. To overcome this crisis a brand new care system has to be imagined and enhanced.
The course will introduce and discuss the notion of “networks of care”. That is, networks of caregivers aiming at collaboratively solving care-related problems. Thus, how a network of care distributes the need care activities among multiplicity of actors? How the collaborative encounters on which these care activities are based can be defined and characterized?
The Lecture will be a short reflexive design exercise, made of frontal lectures, work in groups and collective discussions to imagine some service ideas and deepen the general topic.