ExperimentaDesign is an international platform open to reflection and experimentation and devoted to design, project culture and creativity. As of 2008, this innovative, multidisciplinary event, founded in Lisbon, will take place alternately in Lisbon and Amsterdam. Its focus is design in its broadest sense: design as a tool, as a process of creation. ExperimentaDesign positions itself at the cutting edge of the modern culture, promoting the creation of laboratories, setting up international working parties and developing strategic synergies between cultural agents.

Challenge and experiment
ExperimentaDesign is essentially a reason for creating, and then, also, a space for exhibiting. It programmes possibilities, challenges participants, crosses paths, questions, experiments. It thinks about aesthetics,
ethics, social cohesion, industry, sustainability and economy. But above all it thinks about people.

Coming soon to Amsterdam

ExperimentaDesign’s first four editions took place in Lisbon. Now, in 2008, with the new platform created between the Dutch and Portuguese capitals, Amsterdam will host ExperimentaDesign for the first time. The theme this year is Space and Place, focusing on the questions raised by new urban landscapes and contemporary living in cities.

As in all other editions of ExperimentaDesign, the programme is designed to appeal to a range of audiences, from professionals to the general public. The opening week, filled with exhibitions, conferences, debates and
urban interventions, is a moment of strong social experience. People come from all around the world to listen, see, share and celebrate design and architecture.

ExperimentaDesign – Lisboa/Amsterdam is the result of a collaboration between ExperimentaDesign and the ExperimentaDesign Amsterdam Foundation, and between the cities of Lisbon and Amsterdam, with the local partnership of Droog Design.

Guter Konsum – böser Konsum

David Carlson has been working with design as a competitive weapon for twenty years. With design as an added value the Swedish designer helps his assigners create attractive brands ready for the challenges of the future. His assigners include Absolut, Level Vodka and Sony Ericsson to mention a few.

Since 2005 Carlson is sharing his thoughts on design in a quaterly report, called the »David Report«. The latest issue »I shop therefore I am« is about our consumption. Sponsor is the vodka brand »Absolute« from Sweden. The report consist of his thoughts and insights on consumption and also has an interview with Mathilde Tham, a professor of Beckmans College of Design and features Kristina Dryza, a trend forecaster and Sante Poroma, a Zen teacher from Stockholm.

[…] maybe it’s time to divide our consumption into good and bad consumption? […] we do have the opportunity to, through our consumption and our choices, create a better world (one mustn’t forget that the power of the consumer is enormous). It is all about WHAT Continue Reading »

From Studio Düsburg, a studio for experimental architecture, comes an interesting architecture project that deals with the re-intergration and transformation of former industrial areas into modern lifestyle and culture.

The “Autobahn 59″ is a highway built in the sixties and connects parts of the Rhein-Ruhr-Area in North-South direction. Even today it is a construction of high technical standard, because a lot of parts of the highway are bridges. Near to the exit Duisburg-Marxloh there used to be a railroad bridge. When the railroad track went out of use they reconstructed Continue Reading »

Art and design have had an enduringly productive relationship. Artists and designers, as well as graphic artists, fashion designers, and architects, share common strategies, methods, and aims. While some artists employ design strategies to make socially critical statements, others use design as a way of reflecting everyday phenomena, emotions, or conceptual approaches. (Picture: Martino Gamper, Gallery Furniture, 2007 © Francis Ware)

Many designers on the other hand, having dispensed with any belief in the ideal of neutrality, intervene increasingly in social, political, ethical, or ecological discourses. This exhibition confronts ten contemporary positions on the edge of reality, on the border of what is possible. Featuring: Jurgen Bey (NL), Bless (FR/DE), Dexter Sinister (GB/US), Dunne & Raby and Michael Anastassiades (GB), Alicia Framis (ES), Martino Gamper (IT/GB), Ryan Gander (GB), Martí Guixé (ES), Tobias Rehberger (DE) and Superflex (DK). A co-production with the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève and the Haute école d’art et de design Genève.

The exhibition »Would it be nice…« can be seen in the Museum of Design Zurich till 25 May 2008.

The above is the title of the picture you see to the left – it is an artwork that participates in the »NanoArt 2007«. It is an exhibition that takes place online.

»This site was founded by the artist and scientist Cris Orfescu to promote worldwide the NanoArt as a reflection of the technological movement. NanoArt is a more appealing and effective way to communicate with the general public and to inform people about the new technologies of the 21st Century and should raise the public’s awareness of Nanotechnology and its impact on our lives.«

Using religious or romantic symbolics to communicate what impact nanotechnology will have in our future is probably the wrong approach. Or did those artworks make you think about the critical aspects of new technologies? Design offers better possibilities to experience future technologies or products. On the Interaction Design Department of the Royal College of Art (lead by Anthony Dunne) so called »What If« scenarios are used to display what could happen if certain technologies get applied to the objects that surround us.

What better invention than a car that is driven by air could be made in times of climate change where the price for the barrel oil climbs over $100? Since years Guy Nègre is assuring the motor industry that he has got the key to this new technology. And already in 2002 the media (e. g. in the German business magazine »brandeins«)reported about the serial production of the new wonder-cars to be started that year.

What’s behind the idea? Nègre developed an engine that runs with compressed air instead of fuel: air is compressed in vaults and by expanding again in the engine it produces power that is used to run the engine. As a tankful of air only lasts for 80 kilometers (50 miles) and the car then would have been connected to a power plug to produce compressed air, the car will also be built in a version that Continue Reading »