Perspectives – Milano Design Week

The design-centered project coCreationcamp is selected in the Perspectives exhibition – Design is Belgium – and will be shared at the Triennale, April 17-22, 2012.

‘Belgium is Design’ proudly announces details of Perspectives, an exhibition that surveys the current landscape of Belgian design and is the result of collaboration by the country’s leading design organizations and promoters. Taking place at the prestigious Triennale di Milano during Milan Design Week from 17-22 April 2012, a total of 25 established and emerging Belgian designers and companies will participate in the event.

Where is the horizon for today’s designs? What clouds are gathering ahead? And what lies beyond? In a collection of prototypes, products, services, projects and systems, Perspectives offers intriguing, thoughtful and joyful reference points from which to consider the influence and impact design has on daily lives lived in parallel, colliding, harmonious and divergent ways.

Perspectives places emphasis not only on design in the here and now, but on its prehistory and future projections. Sampling an array of practices and methodologies, it is a logic that invites the visitor to consider the designer’s search for a solution and its interpretation once in the public realm. From a social perspective, design comes from a desire to change – a more or less utopian representation of something better. This motivation also traverses design’s cultural perspective, where forms, materials, technical realizations and production processes provide important anthropological indicators and evidence of the evolution of human behaviour, needs and wants.

Reflecting both local and global contexts, the narrative of the exhibition draws on five different scenarios: industrial design, self-produced design (the designer/craftsman), design art (one-off series), social design and design as an ‘open work’ (open source, rapid prototyping). From these indicative ‘perspective grids’, each strand will give a kind of inventory of perspectives, demonstrating how approaches to design merge, converge and diverge. ‘How, why and what?’ questions are posed throughout, with Belgian designers and companies responding to challenges such as economic instability, environmental impact, ageing populations, sustainable development and social cohesion with objects and projects that range from cooking pots to walking sticks and production models.

However, Perspectives also acknowledges the intangible world design occupies, where the poetic potential of rapid prototyping and raw materials does not exclude one another. In this dimension, the motivations and emotions of the designer meet those they provoke in the user, and the experience can be both intensely individual or a political invitation to share responsibility. It all depends on the perspective.

This is the first time that the joint Belgian design exhibition has taken place at the Triennale during Milan Design Week. The location, built in 1933, is a major reference for international design, art, applied arts and architecture exhibitions, and offers a setting in which content is paramount and where participants, their work & associated partners/agencies can receive maximum exposure on the international stage.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue and website.

More via the Perspectives website.