DMY Design Festival: Same, Same But Different

Good news for city leaders looking for different ideas.

According to Marcia Caines, in this blog, the design trend at the recent International DMY Design Festival in Berlin was greater emphasis on “public space, recycling, re-use and open source technologies”, which she sees as a result of the economic and social changes of late.  The theme of the event highlighting ‘design that makes a difference’ can’t hurt either.

City leaders may be interested in the ‘You May [take the public space]’ furniture, designed for public space.

The bright red wooden benches “that seat up to 15 people are the creation of the Vienna based designer’s Karl Emilio Pircher and Fidel Peugeot and are a direct attempt to empower people to repossess public space and explore its potential.” They aim to encourage people to “meet, network and take inspiration from public space”. 

We may be seeing more of this type of design around, given the growth of initiatives re-claiming the streets, like this one in New York.

Marcia also mentions this rather novel approach to city planning by Hans Venhuizen:

At the symposium, “he described the practice of ‘game planning’, a game played with inhabitants to start the design process in planning. Based on board game rules and principles he creates different group identities with the purpose of causing conflict, such as pioneers versus housing consumers, for example. The groups compete and the result is a plan from which a landscape emerges. The game develops over different phases and ends in a lobby, where the only players who cannot be eliminated are the present inhabitants. This method involves all kinds of elements that create an imperfect town, which according to Hans Venhuizen is the ideal town.  The ‘game planning’ method provides an innovative solution to urban planning processes that blend existing natural and cultural heritage with contemporary culture and the constantly changing environment.”

  

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