You are invited to submit contributions to the NORDES 2021 conference: Matters of Scale. The 9th Nordic Design Research Society (NORDES) conference is hosted by Design School Kolding and University of Southern Denmark – Kolding. The conference takes place: 15th -18th August 2021.
Full call is at http://conference2021nordes.org/
Conference theme: Matters of scale
Scale is ubiquitous in the world of design, but its implications mostly go unnoticed. Terms that are easy to use, like the global or human-scale, have widespread allure and even impact, yet they also hide and confuse.
Although scale is a fundamental feature of all systems, artefacts and organisms, it is surprisingly rarely reflected upon in design. In the abstract, scale points to mathematical features but it is, above all, inherently relational and comparative. To think about scale nearly always involves thinking about another context of activity or reception that is either inside, outside or beyond the immediate field of practice. Design research may be pivotal in how matters of scale are understood and acted on.
In these times of urgent troubles, problems appear to be large-scale and designers are often invited to ‘scale up’ their efforts to solve them, or defend the wellbeing or the rights of a universal ‘human’. Meanwhile viruses, for instance, wreak havoc in machines and bodies across different orders of scale, connecting and disconnecting in complicated ways. If size, temporal duration, scope, territory and impact work in scalar ways in design, whether noticed or not, how can we learn to take scale seriously?
Nordes 2021 provides opportunities to explore the multiple roles, processes and impacts of scales across all areas of design and design research in all their manifestations. How does scale matter in the context of design, designs and designers? What kinds of scalar relationships does design involve and how does or might design research identify and problematise these?
Full papers, exploratory papers, exhibition and workshops that, in design research, explicitly address the topic of ‘Matters of Scale’ are invited.
The matters of scale
Potential conference themes may include, but are not limited to:
- Audit, measurement and ranking
- Manufacture, modularity and making
- Human-, non-human and other scales and calibrations
- Queer scales
- Communities, publics, diasporas, networks
- Governance, design for policy and implementation
- Downscaling, relocalising, resilience, resistance
- Territories, borders, shrinkage, dead spaces
- Economies of scale
- Temporal regimes: routines and irregularities; sprints and hacks
- Open, big and small data
- Prototypes, toolkits, archetypes, blueprints, guidelines, models
- Platforms and one-offs
- Representations, reproductions, fakes
Submission categories
Full submissions to all categories are due to January 20, 2021 and will receive peer review. Full submissions means that it is not enough to just submit an abstract. Full and exploratory papers are subject to a double-blind, peer review process, and accepted full and exploratory papers will be published in the online Nordes Digital Archive.
Submission categories:
You can now find the submission template, and detailed descriptions of each of the submission categories: Full papers, Exploratory papers, Exhibition and Workshops.
We are especially excited about the workshop and exhibition categories where the chairs are encouraging everyone to stretch and explore different formats and places for engagement.
The Workshop Chairs Danielle Wilde & Susan Kozel introduce the call with: “Nordes Workshops in 2021 will provide the opportunity to translate Matters of Scale into practice. With the shattering of conventions and practices of all kinds occurring at present, Matters of Scale can be addressed with added urgency and vitality. The what, the how, and the scope of scale? Micro, macro, global, multi-species, relational, temporal, ephemeral? The inside, the outside, the beyond? We invite you to investigate Matters of Scale at the same time as posing the question of what it means to workshop, to make or to practice together in current circumstances? For Nordes 2021, the traditional workshop format can be stretched so that Matters of Scale are reconfigured, critiqued and re-performed. Formats can engender opportunities to meet, engage in in depth exchanges, discuss, reflect or provoke. They can take place in Kolding, in distributed locations, outside or online”. Call for workshops: Matters of Scale in Practice
The Exhibition Chairs Eva Knutz & Kathrina Dankl have moved the exhibition into urban space. They introduce the call with: “The exhibition format of Nordes 2021 will take participants outside the doors of the main conference venues and into the city of Kolding. Alongside a route through the city, spatial objects such as a bridge, flora such as trees and fauna such as ducks have been picked as starting points for site-specific design experiments that negotiate matters of scale. Scaling in this context, attempts to bring about temporary experiments that create a dialogue between different actors and relate to the term “scale” in various ways. These may be spatial investigations and interactions, dealing with light/ heavy, micro/macro, below/above the ground; they might discuss relations and context-specificity, for instance public places/private spaces/non-places or local/global scale/connecting with many/linking a few; design experiments may well negotiate cultural citizenship and communication among humans and non-humans in the city.” Call for exhibition: Agency in the City of Kolding
Key dates
20 Jan 2021 Deadline for full submissions
1 April 2021 Notification to authors
3 May 2021 Final submission deadline
15-18 August 2021 Conference
Full conference website is at http://conference2021nordes.org/
