"A lot of little people, in little places, doing little things, can change the world." The designer Mariana Eidler uses the phrase of the Uruguayan journalist and writer Eduardo Galeano to explain the philosophy behind Barcelona Design Week, an event that will actually last for a whole month (from June 2 to 22) and that, after After two years of restrictions, it will try precisely to create connections, "mix the new talent with those who have added years of experience" in order to "design the new experiences that we want to live" and "create new presents".
Within this desire to make design visible as an engine of change and a tool for transformation, among the 130 activities programmed in 80 spaces in the city, the project La Casa de Pensar by Ikea is paradigmatic, an ephemeral space set up outside the Diseny Hub where Three teams made up of professionals and students from Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia will meet to think of solutions that improve and make life easier for the elderly. The best proposals, selected by a group of experts, will later be exhibited in Valencia and, through open source, will be available to anyone who wants to implement them.
Directed by Isabel Roig, the motto of the Barcelona Design Week is Wayfindings. Guidelines for creating new presents. "Our futures will depend on the new presents, and young people and design are key to defining them," says the director. The person in charge of giving the starting signal, tomorrow, at the Disseny Hub, will be an Artificial Intelligence Totem that will guide the visitors and inform them of the scheduled activities. That same day, in addition to La Casa de Pensar, the exhibition will be inaugurated that includes the best design of the year (500 products and projects, among which the FAD, ADG and ADI awards will emerge that will be awarded in the coming weeks) .
And also Ukraine: Design for real life, shows that because of the war objects will not be able to travel, but that it will also expose how the design that reflected on ecology or the materials of the future, has been transformed after the conflict into another more urgent focused on providing solutions to the survival needs of the Ukrainian people.
The founder of tactica.barcelona Mariana Eidler, who has been part of the advisory committee together with Andreu Carulla, Jordi Ribaudí, Francesca Tur and Marc Viardot, will also be the curator of La Experiencia, one of the central spaces of the festival, in Jardinets de Gràcia , where in addition to interdisciplinary round tables, there will be interactive augmented reality experiences and performative actions, some of which will take place in an inflatable igloo that, from June 16 to 18, will be set up every afternoon (from 7:00 p.m.) Jordi Enrich .
The Barcelona Design Week also establishes bridges with the New European Bauhaus Festival, within the framework of which activities such as the one that will try to reactivate the Nau Bostik as a "new decapitalized, non-hierarchical and inclusive space for society" are registered, and will include a Food Design Week, with six gastronomic routes in which participating restaurants and establishments will offer special menus, workshops and experiences. Although many of the proposals will continue over time, the closing party will take place on the 22nd, in the surroundings of Turó Park, where a good number of galleries and furniture stores are concentrated.
