Plenary Session
With Keynote FeaturingBruce Mau & Aiyemobisi “Bisi” Williams
Wednesday, October 28, 9:15 AM – 10:45 AM
Designing the World as a Learning Machine
Learning does not only happen in classrooms. It evolves from the environments we design. Drawing on Marshall McLuhan’s insight that we shape our tools and they shape us, this keynote explores how learning environments function as living systems that continuously teach through space, structure, culture, and experience.
As education continues to develop, our opportunity is not simply to create better rooms or products, but to shape learning ecosystems that support adaptability, well being, and long term resilience. We will explore how schools and campuses can become dynamic learning infrastructures and how life-centered design choices can help people and learning thrive.
Learning Objectives
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See learning environments as active systems that influence behavior, relationships, and outcomes over time.
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Apply McLuhan’s thinking to recognize how the environment itself acts as an educator, shaping what and how people learn.
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Understand how life centered design connects learning, well being, and sustainability in practical and measurable ways.
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Shift our perspective from knowledge delivery toward capability cultivation when imagining and designing future learning environments.
About the Speakers
Bruce Mau
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Massive Change Network® (MCN),
Bruce Mau is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Offi cer of Massive Change Network (MCN), a global design consultancy in the Chicago Area. Bruce is a renowned designer, innovator, educator, author and artist. His love of thorny problems led him to create a holistic, systems-based methodology for life-centered design that serves as the foundation for the MCN process and practice. Across nearly 40 years of design innovation, he’s collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and
fellow optimists.
Bruce serves as a professor and strategic curricular advisor for multiple higher education institutions. His various positions include: Institute Professor & Professor of Practice in Graphic Design at The Design School at Arizona State University; adjunct professor and member of the University of New South Wales Arts, Design & Architecture Academic and Executive Team; and visiting professor at academic institutions across North America, including the McEwen School of Architecture at Laurentian University in his hometown of Sudbury, Ontario, Pratt Institute, and University of Wisconsin-Madison. In recognition of his commitment to advancing Life-Centered Design, the practice of shaping solutions that serve not only people and communities, but the entire living world Bruce has been recognized by the Society for Experiential Graphic Design (SEGD) as an SEGD Fellow and was recently honored as the inaugural Phillip A. Levy Fellow in Life-Centered Design at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Human Ecology.
Along with MCN co-founder, Aiyemobisi “Bisi” Williams, Bruce created MASSIVE ACTION, a global multidisciplinary immersive learning initiative to collectively design a better future. Bruce has a passionate interest in the art of books and has designed more than 250 of them. He became an international figure with the 1995 publication of his landmark “S,M,L,XL,” designed and co-authored with award-winning architect Rem Koolhaas. An author himself, Bruce’s most recent books are “MC24” and “THE NEXUS: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World — The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science,” co-authored with Julio M. Ottino. Bruce’s work and life story are the subject of the 2022 feature-length documentary, “MAU,” which premiered at SXSW in 2021. Currently available on TVOD in North America, the film has brought design into the cultural spotlight.
Aiyemobisi "Bisi" Williams
Co-Founder and Chief Insights and Analytics Officer of Massive Change Network (MCN)