5th Biennial Design Science Symposium

Co-organized by RISD's Nature Lab and the Synergetics Collaborative, the Design Science Symposium is an interactive meeting of makers, thinkers, practitioners, and educators.

This year's focus was STEAM Intelligence, which stands for multidisciplinary thinking that relies on actively integrating and applying Science, Technology, Engineering, Art+Design, and Math. Themes for the 2016 Symposium included whole systems thinking, bio design, and biomimicry.

This 3-day event brought together over 220 registrants from the US, Israel, France, Mexico, and Poland, among others. The program featured keynote and plenary speakers, hands-on making workshops, share and tell presentations, an art exhibition of Dennis Dreher's work curated by RISD Senior Critic in Industrial Design Amy Leitdke, as well as The Edna Lawrence Nature Lab, and The Arthur Loeb Design Science Teaching Collection.

Keynote Speakers included green building strategist Bill Browning, MS; artist Rebecca Kamen, MFA (RISD MFA ‘78, Sculpture); architect - morphologist Haresh Lalvani, PhD; and green chemist John Warner, PhD. Their recorded presentations can be found below.

For more information please visit the Design Science Symposium website. Hope you can join us in 2018!