Join UC Berkeley Master of Design (MDes) faculty member Pierluigi Dalla Rosa and visionary architect Dr. Eugene Tssui for a conversation on how designers (and humanity at large) can chart new paths forward through evolutionary thinking.
Dr. Tssui harnesses the ingenuity of the natural world in his multidisciplinary practice that spans architecture, fashion design, hand-painted renderings, and music. His work offers bold alternatives to technological sameness, creative specialization, and cultural homogenization.
Pierluigi Dalla Rosa brings a complementary perspective shaped by his work designing novel interfaces and his teaching at Berkeley MDes, where he encourages students to treat technology not as a given, but as a material to question, shape, and reimagine.
Together, Dalla Rosa and Tssui will examine how the rapid proliferation of emerging technologies is influencing creative practice and planetary well-being, and what it might look like to resist that tide.
The evening will feature an exclusive premiere of footage from Tssui’s forthcoming documentary, followed by a reception with refreshments and an interactive exhibition of student work from the Berkeley MDes program.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Pierluigi Dalla Rosa is an artist, designer, leader, inventor, and educator with a passion for the medium of computation. With extensive experience in both in-house and consulting roles, he has helped to build and ship forward-looking products for large companies and startups, such as Apple, NIO, Panasonic, and Humane. His commitment to crafting experiences and artifacts that elevate human intellect and unleash creative potential is the cornerstone of his professional ethos. He actively explores the space at the intersection of sustainability and computing and other areas of interest include collective and spatial computing outside of traditional devices. Pierluigi is faculty at the Berkeley Master of Design (MDes) program, where he inspires students to envision new narratives about a future with sustainable practices in technology. He holds a master’s degree in Cinema and Media Engineering from Politecnico di Torino and he is an alumnus of the interaction design program at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design.
Dr. Eugene Tssui is an architect, educator, athlete, and visionary with a commitment to ecological design principles since 1990. With experience working alongside revolutionary architects Bruce Goff and Dr. Frei Otto in the 1980s, he has designed sustainable buildings and planned cities for indigenous communities in Shenzhen, China from 1999-2015. His dedication to creating structures that harmonize with nature earned him the title “Guardian Angel of the Planet” in 2013, alongside Jane Goodall and Jean Michel Cousteau. He actively explores the intersection of architecture and environmentalism, with his work to be featured at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 2023-2024. Eugene has taught at UC Berkeley, Ohio University, and universities throughout China, inspiring students to embrace ecological approaches to architecture. He holds an Interdisciplinary Doctorate from UC Berkeley (1990) and is an alumnus of Columbia University, having been part of E. Paul Torrance’s creativity development program in the 1960s.
ABOUT BERKELEY MDES
The UC Berkeley Master of Design (MDes) is a professional graduate program in design for emerging technologies. Jointly offered by UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering and College of Environmental Design, the MDes emphasizes a critical approach to design and social practice to address the new realities of emerging technologies in the 21st century.
SCHEDULE
5:30 – 6:30PM: Evolutionary Design: A Conversation with Eugene Tssui
6:30 – 8:00PM: Refreshments, mingling and MDes student work exhibits. Optional inside look at the Berkeley MDes facilities, including the Jacobs Institute of Design Innovation Makerspaces.