Z33

Future visions are everywhere. Politicians promise us a better future – certainly in times of elections – scientists and technologists work towards it, companies try to shape a version of the future in which their products and services become necessities, and you and I sometimes think about our future, or our children’s and grandchildren’s. But can we find our way in the midst of all those visions? Can we read and appraise them? Which parameters are important in order to do so?

In a Z33 commissioned ‘Not Here, Not Now,’ Dunne & Raby present different interfaces for an alternative world. The interfaces belong to the digitarian world; one of the kingdoms of the United Micro Kingdoms project, characterized by neoliberalism and digital technology.

In the second Z33 Debate, ‘Practice of Exhibiting,’ Jan Boelen and Joseph Grima discuss the background and their ideas for a ‘European Design Parliament.’

In the grey areas of “social innovation”, policy experts and computer hackers are adopting a design ethos to rethink intractable social problems. Nothing embodies the merging of these two phenomena in the field of design quite like open-source design.

Co-produced by Z33, Disaster Playground by Nelly Ben Hayoun is a platform investigating future outer space catastrophes and the design of procedures that allow us to manage these catastrophes and assess the risks involved.

In the third debate, Jan Boelen, Aldo Bakker and Rianne Makkink discuss their practice of mentorship and collaboration in their role as teachers at the Design Academy Eindhoven, in their own studios, and as mentors in the upcoming design biennial BIO 50 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in September–December 2014.

New Z33 Research book, ‘Future Thinking in Art and Design,’ approaches questions imagination, future literacy and ethics of future-oriented design and art practices. The publication, which will be published in the early 2018, consists of essays and reflections of prominent art and design thinkers and designers, and art and design projects.

Partly triggered by the crisis and partly fighting to stay relevant, in recent years biennials have stepped out of their traditional boundaries by inviting multidisciplinary teams of curators to share relevant perspectives, exploring controversial niches in the design world or overlapping design and architecture with politics and policy.

Prior to the opening on March 21, 2014, of the exhibition Konstantin Grcic: Panorama (coproduced by Z33 and the Vitra Design Museum), the Vitra Design Museum hosted an opening talk in Zaha Hadid’s Fire Station on the Vitra Campus. Konstantin Grcic talks about his work with Mateo Kries (Director, Vitra Design Museum), and Jan Boelen (Artistic Director, Z33 ). They discuss inspiration and innovation, the challenges of contemporary design, and the social and technological utopias that could shape the world of tomorrow.

What is authorship in open source design? How is an object system based on open source distributed? Belgian designer Thomas Lommée, initiator of OpenStructures, talks about OpenStructures and prospective future of open source design in an interview published in connection with BIO 50 – 24th Biennial of Design Ljubljana in 2014.

Exhibition MANUFACTUUR 3.0 searches for new production models in a fast changing world. Digital revolutions, ecological awareness and shifts in the fields of work and labour encourage us to rethink the traditional industrial production model. MANUFACTUUR 3.0 brings designers and artists together to work around alternative production scenarios. The exhibition functions as a production platform, continuously in progress.

‘Konstantin Grcic – Panorama’ is the largest solo exhibition on one of the most influential designers of our time. ‘Panorama’ is not a mere retrospective exhibition, but rather a personal statement by Konstantin Grcic on the future.

In the first Z33 Debate, ‘Future Thinking,’ Jan Boelen and Tobias Revell explore a series of questions related to design and future thinking. Whereas all designers design for the future, some do it more intentionally than others; for some, proposing or facilitating alternative future visions is the core of their work.

When key materials and ingredients are scarce, those who control them have power. The rising value of a commodity can cause it to take on new meaning and can alter our relationship to it. Jan Boelen, artistic director of Z33 House for contemporary art, curated the exhibition ‘Designing Scarcity – Design and Innovation in Times of Scarcity’ at The New Institute in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.