Elvin Karana, together with Faith Kane (Massey University, New Zealand), Prof. Tom Fisher (Nottingham Trent University, UK), Prof. Elisa Giaccardi (TU Delft), are chairing a track session on the topic “Material-Enabled Changes in Design Research and Practic”. The track call is for the DRS2018 Conference. The deadline for final paper submission is November 6th. 

With this call, we seek to investigate how emerging materials and practices radically change the role of the designer from a ‘passive recipient’ to an ‘active maker’ of materials (Myers, 2012; Karana et al., 2015; Rognoli et al., 2015), as well as the way materials are experienced by people through their daily artifacts. Moreover, we are interested in understanding how practices of design and use in these areas create an opportunity to activate positive social (Drazin and Küchler 2015), environmental, economic and even political change. 

We invite contributions that address these questions:

• How do/will emerging materials advances affect practices around products from the designer and the user perspective?
• How is environmental, social, economic or political change activated through these new materials and material driven design practices?

The complete track theme can be found at this link.