One of our highlights from Copenhagen Design Week 2009 was a well-curated exhibit of new Danish design titled It’s a Small World. The show asks itself how Danish design is reacting to the challenges wrought by globalization, climate change, and technology, and the result is a rather extraordinary and intriguing attempt to encapsulate the energy of contemporary Danish design.
On September 1st, Jennifer Leonard of IDEO and Massive Change fame joined Alex Steffan of Worldchanging, Cameron Sinclair of Architecture for Humanity, architects Bjarke Ingels and Ken Yeang, and other well-known designers, architects and thinkers at the kick-off of CLEAR Village project at the Danish Architecture Center in Copenhagen. The intiative investigates sustainable mid-sized developments to revive rural and peri-urban areas, and aims to allow businesses test out innovative technologies and services at a village scale. It will do this by soliciting design ideas for a sustainable village, and then constructing it.
Imagine a design exhibit design that’s completely recyclable. Transpose that vision to a set of artfully-arranged cardboard structures framing a large warehouse space, in a sunwashed wharf in glimmering Copenhagen. And that’d be ShowHow, one of the most genuinely sustainable of the many exhibits on display for Copenhagen Design Week.
Danish design consultancy Index: recently announced the winners of the 2009 Index:Award, an international design competition that highlights the scale of the problems we face globally, while rewarding design work that points the way towards intelligent solutions. The prize is 100,000 euros per winner in five categories: “Body“, “Home“, “Work“, “Play” and “Community“. This year’s prizes have been chosen from more than 700 entries, all of which had to meet the theme: Design to Improve Life.
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