Master in Design for One Health

The Master in Design for One Health is backed up by Elisava, Barcelona School of Design and Engineering, an institution with 60 years of experience sharing knowledge to design and transform the world. The school develops projects to generate and transfer knowledge, address present and future challenges and foster change.

Elisava is a space to become a professional with the skills needed to design products, services, and environments to create a more environmentally responsible, inclusive, and community-focused society.

Anna del Corral
Professor and researcher at Elisava

She leads the research group Decoding Wellbeing at Elisava Research. Her field of research are the design methodologies that allow to devise healthy spaces, and products and services for wellbeing and care; from a global perspective that involves considering human welfare in all its facets, integrating the unavoidable objectives of respect, conservation, and recovery of the environment, and all its living systems.

This perspective has been developed and integrated in both academic and research projects with companies and institutions such as Sant Joan de Déu, VIBIA, SEAT, EDAG Group, Quadpack or CENFIM.

Anna holds a PhD in Computer Science by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and she’s industrial designer by Elisava.

Prior to joining Elisava, she has been a researcher and professor at the DAC of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (for fourteen years) and worked in the private sector as industrial designer.

María José Araya
Professor and researcher at Elisava

Architect and PhD in Architecture, academic and researcher at Elisava Barcelona School of Design and Engineering, UVic – UCC. Her field of research focuses on the psychological, cognitive and biological bases of the architectural experience, with the aim of contributing to the integral well-being of human beings, through the codification of their relationship with the built environment. From evidence-based design, a systemic view, ergonomics and the principles of neuroarchitecture. In this same line, she has developed various public and private research projects, has participated in several international congresses and has published important scientific papers on the subject.

She is currently a researcher in the Decoding Well-Being line at Elisava Research, co-director of the master’s degree in Design for One Health and an academic at the same institution. At the same time, she works as an architect at maLeon Arquitectura, Diseño e Investigación and is a collaborating architect at TEMA Studio.

María holds a PhD Cum Laude in Architecture from the International University of Catalonia + Elisava (2021), a Master in Design from the Politecnico di Milano (2012), Architect from the University of Santiago de Chile (2006), and Ergonomist from the same institution. She has a long academic experience in Chilean Universities, mainly at the University of Santiago de Chile and Diego Portales University, and since 2006 she has developed as an independent Architect, collaborating with several studios in Chile, Italy and Spain.

Lekshmy Parameswaran
Founding partner, The Care Lab and fuelfor

Lekshmy is a designer who has been working in the area of health and care for almost two decades. In 2008, together with László Herczegh, she co-founded fuelfor, a design consultancy working with a wide variety of international players within the health and care sector. In 2017 they co-founded The Care Lab, a collaborative platform to rethink and redesign care models and solutions for our societies and care systems. Their vision of care is as an equitable, pro-active and compassionate experience that is widely accessible and that forms an integral part of everyday life, from birth to death.

Before starting fuelfor, Lekshmy was Innovation Director, Global Healthcare Team, at Philips Design. She holds a Master of Engineering degree from Cambridge University and a Master of Arts from the Royal College of Art in London.

Glòria Vilalta
Engineer

Glòria has been an Environmental Health Consultant since 2012, constantly aware of our health and our surroundings. She previously worked in the automotive sector for 10 years in various countries. After this period, she became an energy consultant, visiting and analysing municipal facilities, until she found her true vocation, joining engineering and health care. Glòria is also a feng shui consultant and therapist who loves her work.

Ariel Guersenzvaig
Philosopher of technology and design

Ariel researches and writes about the ethical impact of machine intelligence on society, with a focus on health, and algorithmic justice. He has published on these subjects in academic journals such as AI & Society, Journal of Design Research, and IEEE Technology and Society Magazine. He also works in the fields of professional ethics in design. He is the director of the Master in Design and Management of User Experience and Digital Services by Elisava.

Ariel holds a PhD in Design Theory from the University by Southampton (UK) and a MA in Ethics and Philosophy of Religion by the University of Birmingham (UK).

Guim Espelt
Professor and researcher at Elisava Research

He holds a PhD, with a thesis about the representation in cinema of the product design practice and discourse.

He is part of the Elisava Research’s Futures Now group and Managing Editor of Temes de Disseny, Elisava’s design research journal.

He has worked for and collaborated with Barça Foundation, Museu del Disseny de Barcelona, ADI-FAD, Escofet, Studio Suppanen, Apparatu, Birdie Num Num among others.

Tona Monjo
Senior Product Designer (Interaction Design)

Tona has worked with the University of Toronto (Inclusive Design Research Centre), University of California Berkeley, ETH Zürich, University College Dublin, Barcelona City Council, UOC, Fundació La Caixa, Filmoteca de Catalunya, Institut Ramon Llull, Institute for Researching in Biomedicine, Barcelona Biomedical Research Park, TMB, Mercat de les Flors, Editorial Planeta, among others.

She is professor of Interaction at Elisava and assistant professor at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and, formerly, at La Salle University and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.

As a PhD student, her research activity is focused on collective intelligence in co-design processes.

Ainoa Abella
Professor and researcher at Elisava Research

Ainoa holds a PhD in Statistics and Operations Research by the Polytechnic University of Catalonia and a Degree in Industrial Design Engineering by Elisava. She holds a Master in Teacher Training for Compulsory Secondary Education and Vocational Training, specialising in Technology by Blanquerna (URL).

She is currently a lecturer and scientific researcher within the Decoding Well-being research group at Elisava Research, where she participates in academic and private research projects with companies; and collaborates with both national and international institutions.

Her work and publications focus on the parameterisation of emotions, well-being and perception of materials, through kansei engineering and the application of statistics and data visualisation in design.

The One Health concept was articulated in the past as the increase in zoonoses and their impact on human health became evident; human survival conditioned by the environment in which they live.

The concept has evolved to the point where it is conceived as the interdependence, the close relationship of reciprocity, mutual influence and affectation, between human beings and the environment.

This conception must comprise fields such as human health, environmental and ecosystem health, social sciences, ecology, wildlife, land use and biodiversity within a combined commitment to human and ecosystem health.

→ Dersu Uzala, Akira Kurosawa (1975). Dersu is a Siberian hunter who possesses ancestral knowledge about humans, nature and life. Respect for the life of terrestrial ecosystems is what helps this peculiar hunter to survive in an inhospitable environment. “Human beings have forgotten that they are also part of nature”.

The prevalence of human life on Earth is subject to the preservation of the Earth System; it is the Gaia superorganism of James Lovelock and Lynn Margullis’ theory enunciated in the 1970s to model a system that self-regulates to maintain a balance between all its elements, human and non-human.

An approach to the design and redesign of the human context – in which human life develops – from the perspective of Care assumes the function of stewardship and preservation of the Earth System. Only in this balanced and “healthy” system can human life be maintained.

Caring, being sensitive, allowing oneself to be affected by realities that are not one’s own or known, allows the designer to understand that there is a relational complexity in his interventions that must be approached in an integral and integrative way.

 

→ Caregiving Microsite, livesite2018

Who cares about the caregivers? An exploration of how caregiving could be like in the future. As the population ages, more people will be caregivers for the elderly, and those with disabilities.

The project found out about caregivers’ needs, dreams, and desires as they carry out a heavy but important responsibility of caregiving today, and develop a resource guide and set of tools for social workers, and anyone working to support caregivers, to spark conversation and help them reflect and develop personalised best practices.

→ Project Street Doctor

360 Street Doctor is a mobile GP clinic aiming to improve the health & wellbeing of homeless, transient & disadvantaged people in identified suburbs around Perth, WA.

An easily accessible, non-judgemental health service, the 360 Street Doctor works closely with other community services to engage with people that may be unwilling or unable to access traditional health services.

→ Workshop The caring city, by Izaskun Chinchilla

“After decades of industrialization, our cities, in their physical and legislative dimensions, are places geared towards productivity […] distribute merchandise, arrange advertising for a commercial activity or go driving to work. […]

Our cities are a more hostile environment for non-productive activities: try to sleep a bit, use a toilette, drink clean water without paying, breathe uncontaminated air, have fun without consuming or walk without getting wet in a rainy day, and you will realize how challenging the city can be.”

The definition of wellbeing varies significantly depending on the context, area or field from which it is approached, but all approaches and definitions agree on three characteristics: it is a basically positive concept, it is holistic – it involves the body, mind and spirit – and it is individual – it depends on the perspectives and priorities of each individual.

However, the concept of wellbeing does not only apply to human beings (present and future), it transcends to other species and trans-species, to ecosystems, and to the planet itself.

JYU. Wisdom community. “Planetary Well-Being.” Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 8, no. 1 (2021).

 

→ Omotolani. Declaration of Wellbeing: Jazmine Williams. The Wellbeing Project, June 30, 2022. A little poetry for the sake of well-being.

Using the words of Laura Forlano:

“[…] there are emerging technologies that are shaping everyday life, and have begun to play a greater role in socio-cultural, political, and economic transformations […] These developments blur the boundaries between the familiar binaries of human and nonhuman, culture and nature, and human and animal that have dominated Western thinking since at least the Enlightenment. They underscore the ways in which nonhumans—whether environmental or technological—have new kinds of agency in the world.”

“Posthumanism and Design”, Laura Forlando. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation 3, no. 1 (2017): 16–29.

These blurred boundaries that Forlano highlights, place designers in new arenas where their ethics seem to face disjunctions – black or white – but a new ethical gray must emerge.

 

→ The Goods of Design: Professional Ethics for Designers. Ariel Guersenzvaig. Lanham: Rowman et Littlefield, 2021.

“The Goods of Design” argues for a practice-based approach to cultivate professional ethics; it provides a normative direction that can meaningfully guide professional design activity, both individually and collectively. The volume also looks into the implications work has for the designer’s self-growth as a person, offering ways to discover and navigate the complex tensions between personal and professional life.

The same opportunities to develop a full, satisfying, free and independent life, for all people regardless of that list of characteristics that seem to differentiate us, age, gender, race, social and economic status, intellectual and physical abilities, etc.

 

→ Clear Code Architecture, PMMT Arquitectura

Clear Code Architecture® is the result of a research during which PMMT has studied the needs of any limitation in the use of built space.

→ 3D Print Prosthetic Leg: Instalimb（インスタリム）

In the world, there are over 90 million people who cannot purchase prosthetics & orthotics.

Instalimb utilize unprecedented 3D-CAD, 3D printing and machine learning (AI) technology to create an affordable and highquality 3D printed prosthetics & orthotics and deliver all over the world.

“The exposome is defined as the composite of every exposure to which an individual is subjected from conception to death”.

“Epigenetics and Personalized Pain Management”, Ajit K Seena. Essay in Personalized Epigenetics, edited by Trygve O. Tollefsbol, 389–427. London, UK: Elsevier/AP, Academic Press is an imprint of Elsevier, 2015.

 

“In our daily lives we are exposed to all kinds of toxins that can compromise the balance of the organism. It has been demonstrated that low and constant doses of some chemical substances and artificial radiations that we find in our homes and workplaces can have very negative consequences for our health.”4

Hábitat Saludable, Elisabet Silvestre.

 

Using a quote by Guim Espelt:

“The future is inevitable; a temporary space that we will have to live and the uncertainty of which activates the imagination of every human being. Design practice lies where the future influences the present with no regrets to the past. Speculation and fictional narratives about innovation —both technological and social— can be drivers for designing, but research should frame its limits from a critical point of view”.

How these speculatives and fictional narratives can help to design One Health?

 

→ Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance, Godfrey Reggio. United States: Institute for Regional Education, 1983.

Koyaanisqatsi is a call to action to fight for responsible production and consumption before it is too late.

→ The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, Chiwetel, Ejiofor. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. UK., 2019.

A film inspired by incredible real events, it follows the life of a teenager from Malawi, William Kamkwamba, who developed a sophisticated wind energy system with which he managed to provide electricity to a water pump that improved the city’s irrigation system and saved his community from a serious drought, in addition to generating drinkable water for the rest of the neighbours.

→ Zero Childhood Obesity

Gasol Foundation is on a mission to eradicate childhood obesity through research, holistic, data-driven programming and to illuminate the obesity crisis as the greatest opportunity to invest in the health of our future.

→ Untangling Philanthropy, Grace Kang and Grace Kwon

Disrupting power dynamics in philanthropy by challenging funders to cultivate collaborative partnerships with their grantees and ground relationships in trust.

→ Youth Action Lab, Lorena Estrella

Youth Action Lab is an afterschool club for middle schoolers that uses storytelling and creative expression to explore questions on race & identity.

→ PRETTY/UGLY, Tianyue Zhang and Tara Maurice

PRETTY/UGLY is radically rethinking sustainability through content creation, live events, and strategic collaborations in work that communicates the interdependence of man and nature. With a sense of urgency and possibility, PRETTY/UGLY’s work makes clear: “there is no garbage in nature”.