The 21st Designblok, held on the subject Future, will introduce installations by 348 designers
26. 9. 2019
The 21stInternational Design Festival, Designblok, held on the subject Future, will introduce installations by 348 designers, fashion designers, producers, and schools. The motives especially resonating this year will be sustainable production and technologies, and experimenting with materials.
“The leitmotif of this year’s Designblok will be various considerations about the future. Can design help solve the climatic crisis? Can it raise a barrier against our rampant consumerism? In short, can it help make the world better? These are serious questions. We have therefore invited top experts, and not only from the field of design, to find the answers,” Jana Zielinski, the Designblok director, explained.
Superstudio, occupying the right wing of the Industrial Palace, every year focuses on companies and producers. In 2019, it will present news from 71 brands from both the Czech Republic and abroad, and the exhibition of one of our two main foreign guests, Johannes Torpe, created for the Moroso brand. Superstudio will traditionally offer new furniture collections, but also new views of minimalist living, a self-reliant houseboat, work robots, electric bicycles, and virtual reality. The traditional Czech producers will be Ton, Brokis, Master & Master, Lasvit, Preciosa Lighting and many others. This year’s premiere is the Hospodářské noviny Stage, reserved for discussions and lectures focusing on the mutual links between design and business. Openstudio, situated in the Palace’s left wing, will belong to 174 designers, studios, schools and fashion designers. It will also present a selection of the best European diplomas within the Diploma Selection exhibition, while the Reflex Stage platform will every day offer an accompanying program of discussions and lectures, given by designers and foreign guests. Art House, inhabiting the adjacent Lapidarium of the National Museum, bears the subtitle Odyssey this year. It will unfold under the curatorship of Danica Kovářová and the duo Zielinski-Macek, while Miroslav Vavřina and his studio Bittercraft&Com will premiere as its architects. Visitors will enter a darkened space, which will accentuate nineteen selected objects. Dutch designers will occupy an exceptionally extensive part of the exhibition this year: Pieke Bergmans will introduce an installation of neon discharges, the Formafantasma studio will display its light object, WireRing, and the Kranen/Gille studio in its installation, Party, arrives with an object composed of shining heads. The Czech authors will include Jakub Berdych Karpelis, the studio Dechem teamed up with Karin Zadrick, Sebastian Kitzberger, Dominika Petrtýlová, Jan Kaláb, and others. An artificially generated wind and a hypnotic video loop featuring stormy sea will serve to augment the visitors’ experience of the space. Fashion lovers will enjoy a wide array of installations by fashion designers and jewellery-makers in Openstudio and many fashion shows on Garden Stage.
