Green Design Festival 2010 in Athens

Green Design Festival, is back in Athens, two years after its first successful show. From the 23rd of September until the 10th of October, an original, open space and open to the public action will take place, under the auspice of the Municipality of Athens and the Ministry of Environment, sponsored by the Post Bank and has 150 designers from all aspects of design collaborating along with architects, curators and volunteers.

Its aim is to speak about a modern way of live, environmentally friendly, thorugh design and its applications and produce environmental behaviour through its themes and proposals.

Green Design Festival is organised by Brainlab, an independant non-profit and non-govermental organization. The ceter of activities is again Syntagma Square in Athens at the Eco Museum, an environmentally friendly recyclable construction which will house exhibitions, actions, events and educational programs. At the same time, architectural exhibitis will be at seven more central points in Athens, inviting the people to see their city in a different way.

During the Green Design Festival, the city is transformed into a live interactive space of ideas and suggestions, through new technologies, of image and design. Through the various aspects of design and with a strong emphasis on the templates of sustainability (in environmental as well as in a social level), the festival speaks about the consequences of climate change, uses renewable and alternative energy sources, explores the relationship between ecological conscience and economy and focuses on an environmentallyf riendly "re-design"of our everyday life.

Vienna Design Week: 1-11.10.2009

One of my all-time favourite cities is hosting its third Design Week! The aim of VIENNA DESIGN WEEK is to show and enable people to experience the many-faceted creative work in the fields of product, furniture and industrial design, but also aspects of experimental design. After two successful festivals in 2007 and 2008, this October an exquisite and colourful programme of events will be awaiting the visitors. Design is an important field in the production of culture: it shapes our material culture, our everyday life and our consumer world, it influences lifestyle and fashion and most fundamentally our aesthetic sense and judgement. This wide-ranging impact is a reason to celebrate design and also to examine it critically; VIENNA DESIGN WEEK has made both of these its mission.

In cooperation with many partners – from Vienna museums to production and retail companies to designers from all over the world – the whole of Vienna becomes a platform and show-case of design. VIENNA DESIGN WEEK doesn't have the character of a trade fair but instead offers a variety of venues and approaches specific to Vienna. The festival sets out to be "international but localised", with an abiding interest to cooperate with the flourishing design scenes of Central and Eastern Europe, and certainly beyond that. Bringing to Vienna an important international design show every October is another example of the long-due international exchange; VIENNA DESIGN WEEK is stimulating.

The festival aims to reveal creative and production processes and encourage experimental work on the spot. It also presents and promotes design that in the first instance withdraws from the scheme of utility value and functionality in order to create awareness and pose questions or also simply just to have fun. The exploration of materials, mood values and the interaction between people and objects lie at the centre of design practice and consequently are important points of reference within VIENNA DESIGN WEEK.

With exhibitions, venue-specific installations, theme specials, discussion events, a programme of films and, of course, enough opportunity to party and network, VIENNA DESIGN WEEK is not only an attraction for the international design scene but most explicitly also aims to interest and appeal to a wide public audience of Viennese and visitors to Vienna. This year VIENNA DESIGN WEEK energetically goes into the third round with the wish and the aim to take up a firm place on the international festival scene and at the same time become a fixed early-autumn cultural event in Vienna.

The programme is here.

The participating designers are here.

The week's calendar is here.


Photo/Concept: Wolfgang Zajc & Rudolf Zündel