Lisa Norton

Bio

Professor, Architecture, Interior Architecture and Designed Objects, Sculpture (1992). BFA, 1985, Cleveland Institute of Art; MFA, 1987, Cranbrook Academy of Art. Editorial Advisory Board: ZOONTECHNICA. Projects: Hothouse; Design Action; Leadership and the Future, Queensland College of Art. Publications: Integral Leadership Review; Art Asia Pacific; Design Issues; E+E Design Journal, Hong Kong; Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art; Craft Culture. Public Collections: Xiamen City Public Sculpture Collection; Mint Museum of Craft + Design; Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Cranbrook Art Museum.

Personal Statement

Norton has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago since 1992. She teaches, consults and facilitates integral and whole systems approaches to change by design. Over the years her appreciation for the everyday embodied craft processes led her, via human interaction, from fine art into design. How and why does change happen? Design is an instrument of group and systemic change with human relationships at the core. Understanding patterns of order and disorder, designers can create models, images, and artifacts to inspire alternative futures.

She currently teaches Design Denied: The Withholding of Good Design and Its Ethical Implications, a seminar investigating how our built environments both reflect and reproduce the values and consciousness of society; Design Advocacy, an undergraduate seminar for development of platforms for making design leadership strategies actionable. Global Reset, a Masters of Design in Designed Objects seminar on inter-relationships between technological, economic, social and cultural viability.

Professionally, she consults with educational organizations on re-directive design education for inclusivity. Her work takes an integral approach, making opportunities legible to a full spectrum of perspectives and worldviews. She is a contributor to Integral Leadership Review via her column, Integral Design Leadership.

Recent Publications

Integral Design Leadership: Francesco Morace's Hummingbird Strategy Integral Leadership Review, January 2013.

Integral Design Leadership: Envisioning Pure Land @Taiwan Integral Leadership Review, October 2012.

The Unavoidability of Ethics Design Philosophy Politics, August 2012.

Integral Design Leadership: A Personal Introduction, Integral Leadership Review, August 2012.

Integral Design Thinking: Guessing the Future Integral Leadership Review, March 2012.

Integral Sustainable Design: a new book challenges us to create a culture of transformation Point of View (POV) Blog, January 2012.

Recent Projects

HOTHOUSE: Design Action, Leadership and the Future [PDF] sponsored by Queensland College of Art in Brisbane. Radical design futures based on the shift to a mobile urbanism of THINGS, POLITICS, PROJECTS and PRACTICES in the 'Urmadic' context of the coming 'Age of Unsettlement'.

Call for participation in the ongoing project oDESsey.