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Monday, 18 February 2008 | Levent OZLER
Utrecht Manifest 2nd Biennale for Social Design Was a Great Success
The second edition of Utrecht Manifest closed on 11 February 2008. In the space of barely 11 weeks, more than 30,000 visitors and guests from the Netherlands and abroad visited this design biennale. The aim of Utrecht Manifest is to shed light on the latest developments in the field of design and to explore them from a social perspective. With this highly successful edition, the organisation has established a solid basis for future editions. The following edition is scheduled for autumn 2009, and Utrecht Manifest will also take place in 2011 and 2013.
Exhibitions, Lectures and Films
The public programme was rich and diverse: five exhibitions, debates, lectures and film screenings. The exhibitions intendant, designer Ed Annink, oversaw a multidisciplinary satellite programme alongside the main programme. The main exhibitions, Lovely Language - words divide, images unite and A Safe Place - Pictograms for disaster areas were enthusiastically received by press and public alike. Dutch broadsheet NRC Handelsblad noted that Lovely Language "is a statement about the power of images" and ranked it among the three most important Dutch exhibitions of 2007. "Lovely Language provides an intriguing overview of the history of the international visual idiom," wrote the Dutch daily newspaper Trouw, while De Volkskrant noted that "old pictograms have retained their expressive power." Parts of the Living and Working Together presentation featuring recent graduation projects will be shown at the MoMA in New York and the Design Museum in London.
Symposium: The Sustainability Dilemma. Design as a Transformation Strategy
On Wednesday, 28 November 2007, the ambitious international symposium entitled "The Sustainability Dilemma" took place in a hall that was more than filled to capacity at De Pastoe Fabriek. The symposium addressed the capacity of design to drive innovation. What can designers contribute to the transformations that seem necessary in order to find truly sustainable solutions? With presentations by the eminent designer Enzo Mari and the chemist Michael Braungart (co-author of Cradle to Cradle), conflicting opinions soon came to light. While the Cradle to Cradle philosophy champions "eco-effective production" that uses waste as the basis for new products, Mari opened the attack on consumerism and a moral vacuity that is also typical of design: "Works of art are the only remaining expression of ethical values." With contributions from various domains of scholarship, design and architecture, "The Sustainability Dilemma" symposium lay bare the complexity of the debate about the transformation of society, culture and our relationship with nature. The presentation by the Venezuelan architects Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner outlined the potential effectiveness of direct intervention by designers: in conjunction with the communities of the slums of Caracas they are working towards sustainable solutions for an informal city with more than 4 million residents. "We are knitting together the city by building bridges, in the physical as well as the mental sense."
Initiators and Supporting Bodies
Utrecht Manifest is an initiative of the Centraal Museum, design furniture manufacturer Pastoe, the Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU) and the University of Utrecht. Utrecht Manifest was made possible thanks to the generous financial support of Ahrend, Fentener van Vlissingen Cultural Fund, the City of Utrecht, Utrecht Chamber of Commerce, the kfHein Fonds, Kosmopolis, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the Mondriaan Foundation, Pastoe, the Premsela Foundation, the Province of Utrecht, TCN Property Projects, Task Force Innovation (TFI) for the Utrecht Region, the Vrede van Utrecht (Peace Treaty of Utrecht organisation) and the VSBfonds.
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