| Why Future Design Days? |
In the thirties, Gregor Paulsson, the well-known Swedish art historian, stated that architecture is the consistent expression of principle. Today, we say that design is the consistent expression of intention. If you mean something – and have the ability to express it – it is design. As a result, everyone who takes part in the design process has a responsibility. Design is a powerful tool for expressing an opinion, a tool that affects people in their daily lives. So it is time to ensure that this tool is used in a way that changes people’s lives for the better.
Sustainable designSustainable design means bringing about design that has a bearing on the possibility of creating a sustainable future. The thinking on ways of bringing about such a future is divided, to say the least. The popularity and importance of green building has grown dramatically over the last decade. Do people need design?If we take a stroll around town or browse through a magazine, we soon see that design has become a trade commodity, a profitable label. Quite simply, we offer design as if it were a valid purpose in itself, not a process. Hence, FutureDesignDays, an annual get-together dedicated to finding the forms of tomorrow. How do we do this? By setting up an experimental workshop, bringing together the most exciting designers, debaters, decision-makers and free thinkers under one and the same roof – and allow them to interact with everyone who is of a mind to come and take part. The purpose is to search out routes to ideas on design that will mean something to people. In this way, companies and brands will be needs of people, not the construed needs which are marketed by those who deal in, and with, design as if it were a label inside the collar of a shirt. The FutureDesignDays processThe year 2001 saw the first FutureDesignDays ever. Now it’s established as an annual design event in Sweden. FutureDesignDays, which in itself mirrors our way of seeing design, is a process that is intended to capture complicated contexts – and present them in a form that is both understandable and inspiring. The key words – Visions, Action and Interaction – explain what we mean: acting together to bring our visions a step closer to reality. As the designer Carl Malmsten said, ”The main thing is to be gripped by life”. And it is there that the design process starts and ends. Thinking in terms of people’s needs, what life itself demands from these things. And by going through that process, being present as a person. To be gripped by the possibilities that can be brought to fruition through the design process. If we think in this way, we end up a long way from the posh shop street. Instead, we come closer to a view of those things about us that have to do with business ideas, the drive, in fact, to run a business or a brand. |