The Buckminster Fuller Challenge is an annual international design Challenge awarding $100,000 to support the development and implementation of a strategy that has significant potential to solve humanity\'s most pressing problems. Named \"Socially-Responsible Design\'s Highest Award\" by Metropolis Magazine, it attracts bold, visionary, tangible initiatives focused on a well-defined need of critical importance. Winning solutions are regionally specific yet globally applicable and present a truly comprehensive, anticipatory, integrated approach to solving the world\'s complex problems.

Mehr Informationen:

http://challenge.bfi.org/

Marcos L. Rosa, Ute E. Weiland (Hg.)
Handmade Urbanism. From Community Initiatives to Participatory Models

People have always been interested in the cities in which they live. With the world‘s stark urbanization, the engagement of citizens to improve their urban environments is also growing. Far from the traditional urban planning culture, they make use of limited resources, offering solutions to face the challenges these cities offer. They focus on the provision of social infrastructure aiming to improve the living conditions of the residents at the local scale. Handmade Urbanism showcases 15 projects realized mostly in less favored areas of five major cities (Mumbai - São Paulo - Istanbul - Mexico City - Cape Town) in emerging countries, examining the potential of urban transformation embedded in community initiatives. What is the basis for such initiatives? Which are the instruments and tools they use? Illustrations depict their operational modes, reveal the actors involved and trace the steps they made in the organization of the initiatives. Interviews with experts, actors and different stakeholders clarify their meaning towards the local challenges. At a global level, common threads and differences are made clear.

Handmade Urbanism drafts a possible urban vision of the city impacted by those processes and organizes a discussion that promotes participatory initiatives while exploring their potential to impact on the city at large – to the benefit of all.

Handmade Urbanism includes the documentary \"Urban Future\", which provides the reader with further information from the ground. Foreword by Richard Sennett
Marcos L. Rosa, Ute E. Weiland (Hg.)
Handmade Urbanism. From Community Initiatives to Participatory Models
Jovis, 2013, 978-3-86859-225-2

EUR 32.00

Die Hochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd sucht zum nächstmögli-chen Zeitpunkt eine/einen

Akademische Mitarbeiterin/Akademischer Mitarbeiter
Studiengangsassistenz Interaktionsgestaltung – Technik

in Vollzeit, zunächst befristet auf 2 Jahre. Die Eingruppierung erfolgt nach Entgelt-gruppe 9 TV-L.

Der Studiengang Interaktionsgestaltung bildet Gestalter für die Bereiche Interface Design, Application Design, Invention Design und interaktive Kommunikationssysteme aus.

Wir bieten einem kreativen Tüftler ein weites Feld an Betätigungsmöglichkeiten, in dem gestalterische und technologische Belange in Praxis und Theorie verknüpft werden. Dies betrifft u.a. die Konzeption und Durchführung von Unterrichtsveranstaltungen und Workshops ebenso wie die individuelle Betreuung technischer und gestalterischer Fragestellungen bei studentischen Projekten in unserem Medienlabor, bei denen Sie projektbezogen exemplarische Lösungsansätze gemeinsam mit den Studierenden erarbeiten. Für prototypische Umsetzungen setzen Sie entweder bereits vorhandene Materialien ein oder von Ihnen recherchierte neue Technologien. Durch die Weiterentwicklung einer „Interface-Bibliothek“ in Form von praktischen und theoretischen umgesetzten Ein- und Ausgabemodellen, erweitern Sie sukzessive das Leistungsspektrum des Medienlabors. Neuartige Bediensituationen sollen an-hand aussagekräftiger Beispielapplikationen erfahrbar und somit bewertbar gemacht werden.

Einstellungsvoraussetzungen:
Abgeschlossenes Hochschulstudium auf dem Gebiet der Visuellen Kommunikation, des Kommunikationsdesigns, des Grafikdesigns, des Mediendesigns, der Medienin-formatik oder Vergleichbarem, Kenntnisse in den gängigen, designrelevanten Pro-grammiersprachen (vvvv, Processing, Flash, …). Wir erwarten Flexibilität und Teamfähigkeit, soziale Kompetenz und Organisationsgeschick.

Die Hochschule möchte mit der Ausschreibung in besonderer Weise qualifizierte Bewerberinnen ansprechen. Schwerbehinderte werden bei gleicher Eignung bevor-zugt berücksichtigt.

Für telefonische Auskünfte stehen die Akademischen Mitarbeiter, Tel. 07171/602632, gerne zur Verfügung.

Bewerbungen mit den vollständigen üblichen Unterlagen und Arbeitsbeispielen sen-den Sie bitte bis zum 15.03.2013 an: Hochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd, Rektorat, Marie-Curie-Str. 19, 73529 Schwäbisch Gmünd

The Journal of Textile Design Research and Practice (JTDRP) publishes peer-reviewed research in textile design and provides a forum to facilitate, stimulate and disseminate research in the domain of textile design and practice. Encompassing a range of approaches, disciplines and outcomes, the JTDRP invites submissions from the following areas:

• research through textile designing and making – work that uses practice as an integral part of the research process or as a means/method to directly answer a research question; experimental design research into materials and processes; or research in which the creation of artefacts embody the results of the research;

• research informed by textiles – studies which are informed by textiles, textile design research methods and textile practice, and include fields in which textiles are applied, for example, product design, fashion and architecture; and

• research for textile design education encompassing pedagogic studies into the development of textile designers, practitioners and researchers.
Within these areas the journal is interested in the following: interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches and the role of collaboration; relationships between traditional and contemporary practices; the application of new and traditional technologies and materials from both technical and aesthetic perspectives; sustainable textile practices, interfaces between research and industry, the textile design process including the role of drawing and the significance of craft.

The Journal of Textile Design Research and Practice invites submissions in the following four categories:

1) Academic papers
Submissions in this format should address (a) the context of the research/design problem including any research questions, hypotheses or unique materials/processes; (b) how the research/practice has been developed; including the investigative methods used to answer the question and/or create new or novel insights; (c) the main findings, insights, implications or conclusions. Please send an abstract of 300-500 words to Faith Kane at f.e.kane2@lboro.ac.uk. Following initial review by the editors, you may be invited to submit a full paper for peer review.

2) Practitioner Interviews
Submissions in this format should be positioned to provide insight into individual practitioners, their practice, techniques, studio innovations, perspectives on pedagogy and education in textiles, and so forth. Please send an abstract of 300-500 words to J.R. Campbell at jrcamp@kent.edu. You may be invited to submit a full article for peer review.

3) Exhibition Reviews
Submissions to this category can address past, present or planned exhibitions. We welcome reviews of industry-based exhibitions and trade fairs in addition to gallery based exhibitions. Please send an abstract of 300 – 500 words to Nancy-Boiter Powell at nbpowell3@ncsu.edu, for consideration of an industry based exhibition or trade fair and to Faith Kane at f.e.kane2@lboro.ac.uk for consideration for a gallery based exhibition review.

4) Book Reviews
Please email Janette Matthews at J.Matthews@lboro.ac.uk if you would like to be considered as a book reviewer.

Please note that \'academic papers\' should be sent to the following address: f.e.kane2@lboro.ac.uk

This is an open call but the deadline for inclusion in the first edition, due out in Autumn 2013 is Friday 22nd March 2013.

The UNU is the academic arm of the United Nations system. The UNU Institute for Integrated Management of Material Fluxes and of Resources (UNU-FLORES) is located in Dresden, Germany and is seeking applicants for the following position:

Graphic and Multimedia Assistant

CLOSING DATE: MARCH 8, 2013

http://flores.unu.edu
http://unu.edu/about/hr

Application by email is highly encouraged.