Category: Event

Opening talk at Cultures of Assembly

Opening poster for Cultures of Assembly, in Esch-sur-Alzette

I was thrilled to speak at the opening of Cultures of Assembly, a project by the Chair of the City of Esch at the Department of Geography and Spatial Planning, University of Luxembourg (Markus Miessen, Marija Marić, César Reyes Nájera and Francelle Cane). This physical space in the heart of Esch-sur-Alzette seeks to engage in discussions with the local community and beyond, to think together about a fairer future open to political, economic, cultural, and environmental diversity.

The opening event featured talks by Jesko Fezer and myself, discussing the role and value of low threshold design discourses, the production and use of urban space, para-institutional approaches to (urban) design, models of embedded and immersive learning, as well as spaces for experimentation in cities that build on native knowledges. I was happy to revisit some of the work developed during the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, A School of Schools, for the talk and debate that followed. Thanks for having me!

Getting Our Acts Together: Parity Activism Past, Present and Future

An impression of the closing roundtable of the 8th Parity Talks.

For the 8th edition of the Parity Talks, I was honored to moderate the concluding roundtable with Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Torsten Lange, Amy Perkins, Zhu Qianer, Shriya Chaudhry, Khensani Jurczok-de Klerk, Blanka Major and Els Silvrants-Barclay. We talked about the history and milestones achieved by the Parity Group, as well as the dynamics of activism past and present in the framework of the Prix Meret Oppenheim, which was awarded to the group in 2023.

Parity Talks 6 – What’s Good?

For the 6th edition of the Parity Talks at the ETH Zurich, I was thrilled to moderate a roundtable on Tastemaking, with the participation of Meike Schalk, Katarina Bonnevier MYCKET, Cruz Garcia, Nathalie Frankowski, Els Silvrants-Barclay, Regine Keller, Marion Fonjallaz, Morgane Hofstetter, Dieter Dietz, Tom Emerson, Leonie Wagner and Olga Cobuscean. This conversation gathered deans, professors, and students from various institutions, and proposed a multigenerational encounter to discuss our current understanding of good practice, who decides what is good, and the problems of education based on ideas of excellence.

Archipelago: Architectures for the Multiverse

The Archipelago visual identity, by Mitch Paone / AATB based on a concept by Chloe Biocca

I’m thrilled to announce Archipelago: Architectures for the Multiverse, a 3-day hybrid format festival that seeks to interrogate and think through the present moment in contemporary architectural discourse. Taking take place 6-8 May 2021 in Geneva, it is jointly organized by the architecture schools HEAD and HEPIA, and it will be broadcast over the course of three days in a hybrid format combining live and online interventions.

Bringing together three disciplinary strands—architecture, interior architecture and landscape architecture—the festival seeks to offer a snapshot of the present moment, its intersections and overlaps. The three days of exchanges and reflection take place in a specially designed infrastructure at the heart of the Cube, a multifunctional space at HEAD that will double as a broadcast studio for the event. Manifesting in a variety of formats, from intimate conversations to performative interventions, and complemented by masterclasses, films and offsite projects, Archipelago creates multiple entry points for a discussion around contemporary architecture’s lines of inquiry.

We will announce the program soon – meanwhile, you can follow us on Instagram or register to get the latest news on the program and schedule!

Driving the Human: Seven Prototypes for Eco-social Renewal

Earlier this year I joined the team of the Driving the Human initiative as the program coordinator. Driving the Human is a catalyst for experimentation, shaping sustainable and collective futures that combine science, technology, and the arts in a transdisciplinary and collaborative approach. Running from 2020-2023, the project is jointly led by four partner institutions – acatech – National Academy of Science and Engineering, Forecast, the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design and ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe – and relies on the expert knowledge and skills of their combined networks.

Throughout 2023, the community of participants, experts, and the larger audience that Driving the Human brings together will explore diverse phenomena such as the social impact of global warming, energy cycles and technology-driven disruptions, the impact of collective decision making, and contemporary processes of exchanging values and objects.

The results of these explorations will be shared and communicated over the project’s three-year duration, and will deploy strategies for action in the form of physical experiences, with a strong individual and collective impact. Ultimately, they will create tools that enable new ways of envisioning and inhabiting the world.

I’m excited to be part of such an ambitious initiative and I invite you to learn more about the project and partners at the Driving the Human website, Instagram and Facebook channels.

Failure is not an option?

The digital programming around the 2020 edition of the Swiss Design Awards was structured around the question: “Failure is Not an Option?”. The program aims to question the idea of failure as a malfunction, embraces the reassessment that the absence of normality permits, and entertains the idea that failure might be a better option. In this context, I was happy to moderate three conversations with design luminaries Aric Chen, Catherine Ince, and Matylda Krzykowski, where we sought to frame the present moment and its challenges.

The first conversation, with Aric Chen, curatorial director of Design Miami, reflected on the digital turn, the progressive focus on local and regional realities, and a plural, decentered future for the design discipline. With Catherine Ince, chief curator of the V&A East in London, we talked about the role of museums after the pandemic, the importance of creating conversations, and how institutions can become revolutionary spaces of care. And with Matylda Krzykowski, curator and designer, we discussed different forms of isolation from the desert to the city, the need to embrace new categories for design and its practitioners, and how young designers can claim their space. Thank you to the Federal Office of Culture and the team lead by Anna Niederhäuser for the invitation!

Add to the Cake at the Zukunftsforum

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Add to the Cake, the exhibition I curated with Matylda Krzykowski (under our moniker Foreign Legion) came to an end last 3 November. To mark the occasion, we had a panel discussion at the Japanisches Palais in Dresden, in the very room where it all started almost one year ago with the A Woman’s Work symposium.

Within the framework of the Zukunftsforum program, we sat with Thomas Geisler, director of the Museum of Decorative Arts Dresden, Kerstin Flasche, lecturer at the HFKD, and Vivien Tauchmann, designer and researcher, to reflect on the results of one year of work around the theme of the invisibility of female practitioners in design, architecture and the arts. The result has been recorded and can be seen in its totality here – mostly in German.

Design as Learning: Re-edit

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The opening of Fiction Practice: Young Curator’s Lab at the Porto Design Biennale. Photo courtesy Porto Design Biennale.

During this year’s inaugural Porto Design Biennale, curator Mariana Pestana invited Jan Boelen and myself to lead a workshop as part of Fiction Practice: Young Curator’s Lab. The three-day workshop ended in an exhibition at the Casa Museu Quinta de Santiago, in the vicinity of Porto. The workshop took as a starting point the Design As Learning: A School of Schools Reader publication, produced on the occasion of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, A School of Schools.

Through a series of group readings, discussions and site visits, we looked at design education from a wide variety of angles, from its power structures to the spaces where it takes place, and considered how various alternative pedagogical models have been implemented throughout time. These readings, visits and reflections were then re-thought, re-hashed and re-edited to form new reflections and alternative pathways for design, education and design education. 

As the workshop came to an end, participants selected specific issues found in Design as Learning to comment on, enriched by the insights of our time together. This materialized in a “re-edit”, which was expertly translated into a poster format by Zurich-based design office Offshore Studio. At the end of the workshop, our space of encounter was transformed into a space of display, and each poster hung above our roundtable, in dialogue with one another. This was a snapshot of what had happened, a summary of the scope of our discussions, a series of conversation pieces. But because we did not want the discussion to end with the workshop, or to be accessible only to those who had taken part, we invited Dutch designer Teis de Greve to contribute to our installation with an iteration of his A Ditto, Online Device project, specifically customized to respond to the essays of Design as Learning. 

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Introducing the project by Teis de Greve –A Ditto, Online Device. Photo courtesy Porto Design Biennale.

FB_IMG_1572562534068View of the Design as Learning: Re-edit room at Fiction Practice: Young Curator’s Lab. Photo courtesy Porto Design Biennale.

FB_IMG_1572562529004View of the Design as Learning: Re-edit room at Fiction Practice: Young Curator’s Lab. Photo courtesy Porto Design Biennale.

Design education and its futures at Hurra Hurra Festival

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An aspect of Hurra Hurra Festival. Photo by Benno Brucksch and Martin Patze.

It was a pleasure to spend a day in Halle to take part in the Hurra Hurra Festival, a student-organized, multilayered festival on design education that took place at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design. I discussed the work developed for the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, A School of Schools, and took part in a discussion about the environments of the school versus the real world. It was impressive to see the multiple tracks of engagement in the festival, from lectures to workshops, and performances to a night sauna– Thanks for having me!

Foreign Legion at the Porto Design Biennale

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Talking about the work of Foreign Legion at the Porto Design Biennale. Photo by Porto Design Biennale.

Last 27 September, Foreign Legion (a curatorial initiative I founded with Matylda Krzykowski) was invited to give a talk in the context of the inaugural Porto Design Biennale in Portugal. We presented the last year of work, starting with the A Woman’s Work symposium in January, and the two iterations of the exhibition Add to the Cake: Transforming the rules of female practitioners, which is on view at Kunstegewerbemuseum Dresden Schloss Pillnitz until 3 November.

The talk was an opportunity to showcase the issues we’ve been researching and working on, and anticipate some of the directions in which we’ll be focusing in the next months. The Porto Design Biennale audience was attentive and engaged, and we had an opportunity to continue the conversation throughout the evening and into the night. Thanks for having us!

Add to the Cake: Transforming the roles of female practitioners

Add to the Cake: Transforming the roles of female practitionersOn the steps of Wasserpalais at Schloss Pillnitz, Museum of Decorative Arts Dresden. Photo by Klemens Renner.

Last 5 July, the Museum of Decorative Arts Dresden held the official opening of Add to the Cake: Transforming the roles of female practitioners, a project I curated with Matylda Krzykowski under the moniker Foreign Legion. The project started with the A Woman’s Work symposium back in January, and then evolved into a two-part exhibition, with a Preview opening back in 26 April.

With Add to the Cake, we wanted to take the conversation started at the symposium further: We commissioned various practitioners such as Ann Kern, Ji-hee Lee, Gabriel Maher and Garret Nelson to think about What happens when you Add to the Cake? — to think about the future. For the exhibition that opened 5 July 2019, spaces were transformed to give way to a series of installations on visions for the future of female practice. Simultaneously, various Visual Fictions by contributors such as Anne Dessing & Michel van Irsel, Gallery Stephanie Kelly, Kamau Patton and OOIEE, act as an expression of desire for something lacking here and now. The exhibition becomes the transformation it heralds, enacting futures that are inclusive, generous, all-encompassing and joyous.

Add to the Cake advocates that we can – and need to – add to the existing “cake”: infinite layers for an expanded canon. Adding to museum collections and to historical accounts, adding to collective memory and to possible futures. Most importantly, we must realise that “adding” enriches the existing context with multiple, varied voices and perspectives.

After the jump, an outline of all the work and new commissions that were developed as part of Add to the Cake, as well as some installation views.

Continue reading Add to the Cake: Transforming the roles of female practitioners

Digital Bauhaus 2019: Learning Design

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A walking lecture during Digital Bauhaus 2019. Photo Thomas Müller.

I was happy to be one of the speakers of this year’s Digital Bauhaus Summit in Weimar, Germany.  The conference gathers creatives, researchers and anyone interested in new cultural formations, exploring “the political dimensions of design: from collaboration to social design, from Luxury Communism to modernism, from ‘High & Low’ to this year’s topic ‘Learning Design’.”

Speaking about the learning experiences of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, A School of Schools, I shared some insights on the process and outcomes of the biennial, and was thrilled to continue the conversation on education, design, and design education. Thank you for having me!

Swiss Design Awards / Design Miami tour

As part of the public program of this year’s Swiss Design Awards, we explored connections between the works of the nominees and winners alongside the themes explored in the Design Miami exhibition curated by Aric Chen, Design Miami’s Curatorial Director. I was happy to moderate the tour, in which visitors could navigate some highlights and intersections between the work of the nominees and the winners of the Swiss Grand Prix for Design.

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The graphic identity of this year’s Swiss Design Awards, developed by Emanuel Crivelli. Photo courtesy Swiss Design Awards.

Swiss Art Awards 2019: Making, connecting, and kittens

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My proposal for the Swiss Art Awards 2019. Poster design by Matylda Krzykowski.

It was an honor to be nominated for this year’s Swiss Art Awards in the Mediation category, and to have the opportunity to propose a new curatorial format to be tested out at the event itself. The competition is part of Switzerland’s oldest and most renowned art competition – the Schweizer Kunstwettbewerb (Swiss Art Competition). Organized annually by the Swiss Federal Office for Culture since 1899, the exhibition offers insight into current art and architecture making in Switzerland.

My proposal, Making and Connecting, sought to combat contemporary isolationism and our own biases and bubbles, by putting in place an experimental, relational methodology that aims to build network, explore common and uncommon ground, and share and broadcast knowledge within the Swiss Art Awards (SAA) 2020 community. It uses the SAA nominee group to put in place a variety of possibilities for encounter and exchange, allowing the SAA participants (and the general public that visits the exhibition and events programme) to exchange knowledge, learn from each other, and establish new nodes in a network that wants to migrate from a centralized dream – valid for the 20th century – to a decentralized, relational reality, in synch with the 21st century in which we live today.

Bienal da Maia 2019: Design looks ahead


Performance by Acro Clube da Maia in front of AATB’s “A Particular Score” installation. Photo by Rita França.

When Andreia Garcia invited me to curate the Design program of the 2019 Maia Biennial of Contemporary Art, which she was overseeing as chief curator, I was overjoyed for a number of reasons. First, here was an opportunity to work in my home country of Portugal for the first time in ten years; second, it allowed me to stretch the definition of what is design in an event that just incorporated in its program; and finally, it gave me the opportunity to commission new work to some of the most interesting designers working in Portugal and abroad at the moment. I was thrilled to be able to develop new work with AATB, Catarina Carreiras, Orlando Lovell and Pedro Augusto, and had a lot of fun curating the design program of the biennial with Inês Revés. Below an excerpt of the essay detailing the curatorial approach, and more details on each commission after the jump below.

In post-industrial, twenty-first century Europe design is facing a transitional moment. Born with the Industrial Revolution, this discipline experienced a moment of great abundance after the post-war reconstruction boom of the 1950s. The capitalist explosion of the mid-twentieth century brought along the fiction of endless growth. We now know – after the hard consequences of the last two decades – that this was not true. Among financial crises, global warming, the potential failure of the European project and mass layoffs, the context in which the discipline emerged is no longer extant. We face a brave new world in which crisis spread to the point of becoming a quasi-permanent state of affairs, and in which the confrontation of preceding decades will no longer exist. At this moment, we must question all certainties of the last hundred years in order to dream and invent what is yet to come, and to test out a future that we are unable to envision.

In this context, design has met with an impasse, a moment of profound questioning in which the questions that were always answered no longer make sense and the silos of specialization into which it developed are increasingly less relevant. Today, graphic and product design have expanded to encompass other fields and disciplines as new specializations take shape with abstract names such as conceptual design, speculative design, biodesign, social design. Designations aside, what unites these new areas is a sceptical, questioning attitude regarding what design is and what it could be. At the same time, the new ramifications of design are not enclosed in a single disciplinary silo but seek dialogue and mediation with other disciplines – from the social sciences to biology, from economy to literature. This is the advent of a new mentality and new priorities for this disciple: on the one hand, it has realized that its initial objectives are not sustainable; on the other, it recognizes that this is a moment for reinvention and opportunity.

Today, design works with other disciplines as a mediating discipline. It takes on multiple forms and scales, it is visible and invisible, it does not necessarily generate objects or solutions, but interactions, connections and possibilities. Above all, it generates many – if not all – of our interactions with the world, from the technology that we carry in our pockets every day to our relationship with our governments, distribution systems and one another. In doing so, it is a platform for deep experimentation and, most of all, a meeting point.

The Maia Biennial of Contemporary Art’s disciplinary axis of Design also wants to be a meeting point, a stage for sharing, for knowledge, for points of view and modes of producing. In doing so, it carries with it the contemporary reality of design, proposing new ways of making design. Guest participants have all presented new commissions. Two of them manifest formally and occupy the territory with large-scale installations; two other manifest invisibly through interactions with the territory and its inhabitants to generate unexpected unforeseen and multi-sensorial results. All of these are modes of making design; and they are all pathways for contemporary design.

Continue reading Bienal da Maia 2019: Design looks ahead

School Fundamental at the Bauhaus Dessau

Festival School Fundamental, Bahaus Dessau, March 2019. Photo by Thomas Meyer / OstkreuzFestival School Fundamental, Bahaus Dessau, March 2019. Photo by Thomas Meyer / Ostkreuz

At the end of March, the Bauhaus Dessau welcomed an extraordinary festival. Titled School Fundamental, it transformed the historic building into a temporary school, a “testing location” of design learning experiments. The festival brought together several educational experiments taking place all over the globe, and featured an impressive roster of speakers and participants. I was happy to take part and to present, alongside Jan Boelen and Deniz Ova, the work we developed for the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, A School of Schools.

A School of Schools was born out of an examination of contemporary design education, and informed by an attitude of critical reflection towards the past and present of design education with an appreciation of the singular contexts and spaces in which it happens. The curatorial team sought to transcend the traditional spaces of design education and explored design practices that have learning at their core.

Ultimately, the biennial’s many dimensions acted as a starting point, illuminating how the much-needed shift in the field of design and design education is already underway. This shift appears in many shapes and colours, and opens several doors towards possible futures. It calls for greater responsibility and greater agency. It demands visibility and creates spaces for the opinions of others. It pushes design out of its silo and into the spaces where it connects with other disciplines. It insists on learning as a permanent, embodied attitude, one that transcends the formal, spatial and temporal boundaries of the school, and overflows into the world and life itself.

Claiming space and enacting transformation

SKD_awomanswork_MG_8138_davidpinzer_1901An aspect of the A Woman’s Work symposium at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden. Photo David Pinzer.

Thrilled to have just come out of a lively and thought-provoking day of discussions during A Woman’s Work at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden. If you were not able to make it, you can see a report by Emma Lucek at Pamono Stories on the event. Below an excerpt:

The dominance of women both on the panel and in the audience—curators, designers, educators, students, directors, and more—brought home just how far we’ve come already. The significant rise in the visibility of women in the world of design today is undeniable. But as Rawsthorn very articulately summed it up, “We need to build on [these achievements] with a dynamic and critical discourse… While many skirmishes have been won, others await.”

A Woman’s Work

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The visual identity of the symposium, developed by Andrea Anner.

On the occasion of the exhibition “Against Invisibility – Women Designers at the Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau 1898 to 1938”, currently on view at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden, Matylda Krzykowski and I were invited to organize a symposium focusing on female practitioners in design. We organized it under the moniker of Foreign Legion, and called it A Woman’s Work, a symposium on the roles, influence and visibility of female practitioners today.

Taking the exhibition as a starting point, A Woman’s Work examines the contemporary, in order to shed light on the invisibility of the female practitioner as it continues to exist today.

Structured in three parts – ‘Advocates of History’, ‘Enablers of Visibility’ and ‘Dismantlers of Existing Conditions’ – the symposium brings together a wide range of practitioners, scholars, writers, critics and curators based in different parts of Europe, aiming to offer transversal, multigenerational and diverse perspectives on the present and the future of female practice.

Throughout the course of one day – 18 January 2019 –, conversations will take place in a variety of formats, creating platforms for exchange and connection. A Woman’s Work aims to bring women in and around design, art and architecture to the fore, advocating for their visibility to become a permanent condition. We hope to see you in Dresden, and that you will join us in conversation!

Mediated Meaning

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An aspect of Judith Seng’s Acting Things VII: School of Fluid Measures at the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, A School of Schools. Photo by Ekin Özbiçer.

During the closing weekend of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, A School of Schools, Judith Seng’s installation at the Scales School, in the Pera Museum, hosted a special roundtable. International guests – a sociologist, a curator, a philosopher and game theorist, and a theatre director – discussed the project from different angles, offering surprising views on the process and the interactions that Seng’s installation determined. The discussion, which I moderated, centered on the fluidity of standards, and on the possibility to create a notation system for fluid values. The result was published in Disegno #21, and I couldn’t be happier with the result.

Convivial Tools

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I was thrilled to be part of the Design Museum’s Convivial Tools symposium, which re-examined the legacy and work of the late Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich, focusing particularly on his 1973 book Tools for Conviviality. Illich argued that the nature of modern ‘tools’, from machines to schools, had the effect of making people dependent and undermined their own natural abilities. What he called “convivial tools” were those that encouraged people to think for themselves and be more socially engaged.

Convivial Tools was a programme of talks, debates and workshops exploring new strategies for a more cooperative society. Using Ivan Illich’s concept of “conviviality”, it brought together designers, artists, media theorists, curators, and social thinkers from diverse fields to examine current tools and technologies that encourage alternative modes of production and social relations.

I was happy to discuss the “de-schooling” facets of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, A School of Schools, and to take part in a day of incredible discussions and insights.

Spaces of Exception and other formats

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Can Altay presenting at the Spaces of Exception roundtables during the opening weekend of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, A School of Schools.

I was thrilled to be able to curate the public program of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, A School of Schools, as part of my role as a member of the biennial’s curatorial team. As a crucial part of our understanding of the “expanded” character we wanted to give the biennial, the public program was an active and intense part of the biennial’s effort, testing a variety of formats and experimenting with elements of duration, complexity and materialization. Taking place across the six venues of the biennial, the public program was also a way to involve a large local audience and bring several international practitioners to Istanbul, including some international schools who became temporary residents of the exhibition spaces, adding to the show and creating new work while there. In this way, the public program sought to expand and amplify the discussions started by A School of Schools.

Continue reading Spaces of Exception and other formats

A School of Schools is now open

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Performance by Vivien Tauchmann during the press conference of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, A School of Schools. Photo Ilgin Erarslan Yanmaz.

The 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, A School of Schools, has officially opened its doors to the public. The Orientation Days on 20 and 21 September – open to professionals and other accredited visitors – kicked-off an intense series of events and formats, complementing the main biennial exhibition, which extended over six venues in the Beyoglu district of Istanbul. From 22 September to 4 November, A School of Schools will be free and open to the public.

The biennial brings together projects from more than 100 interdisciplinary practitioners from across the globe. Six of the city’s most iconic cultural institutions in the BeyoÄŸlu district—Akbank Sanat, Yapı Kredi Culture Centre, Arter, Pera Museum, SALT Galata, Studio-X Istanbul—will transform into “schools” where new ideas in relation to expanded notions of design and its role in contemporary culture are explored.

Continue reading A School of Schools is now open

F for Film

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A still from an educational film.

For the latest edition of the Abecedarium, a format developed by Alexandra Midal, I was invited to intervene discussing the idea of educational films. At the event, which took place at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and focused mostly on the interactions between design and film, I chose to talk about some of the ways in which film and education are entangled, and focused on the rich material provided by the so-called “social guidance films” developed in the United States in the second half of the 20th century.

My talk advocated that we should ask more from film as a learning space. We should ask for film as an enabler of learning spaces that are open and ambiguous, that open doors and not just close them; that open world-views and not just demand them. Of course, the Abecedarium is in itself this kind of space. Thank you to Alexandra and Sébastien Quequet for the invitation, it was fantastic to be part of this format!

One Woman Show

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Participants of the One Woman Show talk at the Swiss Design Awards 2018. 

I was honored to moderate the One Woman Show talk which took place at the Swiss Design Awards exhibition during Art Basel week. Organized by the Bundesamt für Kultur with the Zurich chapter of Ladies, Wine and Design, the event sought to explore how women work independently as designers and creative practitioners. Discussion topics circled around business and creative leadership, working independently, courage in creativity, work ethics and how to go from fear to freedom. We were lucky enough to be able to hear insights from multiple generations, with participants including Rosmarie Tissi, Cécile Feilchenfeldt, and several of the designers exhibiting as part of the Swiss Design Awards exhibition of this year. The conversation provided an interesting space for the sharing of many different stories, and it was fascinating to see how many of the challenges faced by previous generations are the same – albeit in different scales – as those of the practitioners of today. I am thankful for this opportunity, which was an incredible learning experience.

Towards expanded notions of design

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Talking about Marcelo Rosenbaum’s A Gente Transforma at the “Design Positions” lecture.

I was extremely happy to be invited to lecture as part of the “Design Positions” lecture series, organized by students of the Public Interest Design masters program at the Bergischen Universität Wuppertal. Taking place in public spaces around the city of Wuppertal, the lecture series seeks to create connections with the city and its inhabitants. The recently founded Public Interest Design program has high ambitions and it was fantastic to get to know some of the students and faculty. I took the chance to lecture about some of my recent projects and what I see as interesting directions for the design practice in the 21st century. Thanks for having me!