THE DESIGN TRIENNALE, COMBINING LOCAL & GLOBAL
The main exhibitions will take place at the Musée de la Vie wallonne / Espace Saint-Antoine and for the first time the Museum La Boverie. This new location was originally used as a pavilion for the World Fair in Liege at the turn of the 20th century. It reopened in 2016, following extensive redevelopment works largely carried out by the Liege architecture office p.HD (Paul Hautecler), with award-winning French architect Rudy Ricciotti building a glazed wing that overlooks the Meuse River. The museum houses the city’s fine art collection, and also acts as a multidisciplinary exhibition space that is in partnership with Le Louvre.

The Triennale is strongly connected to the ongoing revitalisation of the city. In addition to museum spaces, a selection of Liege-based galleries and centres of art and design will host related events that celebrate contemporary creativity.

The neighbourhood of the planned Bavière cultural hub will also be invested with a series of activities and interventions – a manifestation of research in design for social innovation on the streets.
And in another move to make RECIPROCITY a global platform, for the first time the organisers have invited a travelling exhibition from one of the world’s leading players in design to take up residence in the city for the duration of the Triennale. In 2018 this will be FABRICA, the prestigious international research centre.

A CROSS-BORDER DESIGN PROGRAMME
Elsewhere, a series of partner organisations from the Euregio Meuse-Rhine continue to support RECIPROcities. This strand underlines the significance of dialogue and exchange, and the emphasis Liege places on the cross-border cultural sector. Participant cities – Hasselt, Kerkrade, Aix-la-Chapelle and Maastricht – will contribute to the 2018 programme with an imaginative range of projects in the form of exhibitions or symposia.

THE THREE CENTRAL STRANDS OF THE 2018 TRIENNALE
While each edition of RECIPROCITY is intended to be a crossroads of various themes, the main objective of this edition, as well as past editions, is nevertheless to highlight the human experiences of individuals and the community, opening up to a wide audience. Accessible, both in the choice of topics and the locations that host the events, the Triennale wants to create a bridge between the economy, the culture, the research, and the know-how in several areas of design: products, technology, industry, crafts, social innovation, graphic design, urbanism and architecture. All these different spheres of research and production are living laboratories. Their impact at the societal level is of crucial importance for the mission of this Triennale and design in general: redefining together the role of design and its impact on social change and citizen participation.

The three central strands of the 2018 Triennale are:

– Design as an economic and cultural vector, capable of provoking a significant transformation of social awareness and ethical responsibility.
In this respect, special focus is given to issues of care. A platform for Walloon, Belgian and international design products and services that directly reflect on sustainable development, and cultural, technological, economic and societal innovation. As such, a series of exhibitions, workshops and a symposium investigate the response of international architects and designers to challenges associated with care and well-being, housing and daily objects. Issues of human, economic and environmental fragility, and accessibility and adaptability, will all be explored in-depth.

– Design education as a place of experimentation and research for a sustainable and ethical future.
As a result of a call for projects open to higher education institutes and universities offering design qualifications, an exhibition of selected works by students will draw up an inventory of design pedagogy in Wallonia and across Europe. The aim and hope is to stimulate and promote interest in learning.

– Design as a shared space of multidisciplinary research & production geared towards social and public innovation.
Here the role of designers is as facilitators of co-creative projects. We see these arise from a new civic responsibility and the principle of social inclusion, engaging directly in the urban, cultural, and economic problems of our cities and suburbs.

RECIPROCITY: A MAJOR CO-CREATION SITE IN EUROPE
RECIPROCITY was born in order to contextualise design in the social fabric. Far from being a simple showcase that brings together products and trends, since it was founded, this Triennale has been a space of research and work that is assembled during the months preceding the inauguration of its exhibitions.

This edition comes from a set of laboratories that took place from the end of 2017: most of the main events in the 2018 programme are the result of workshops organised in schools, in research centres, and in FabLabs…

It is a major co-creation site open to teachers, students, citizens, cultural organisations and associations in the province of Liege, in Belgium, and the Euregio Meuse-Rhine.

Among the workshops that shaped the 2018 edition are:
Welcome to_Bavière: this research / action project was launched in November 2017, and involves students from Liege and the inhabitants of a specific neighbourhood of the city.

The guest exhibition PARADIGM, developed between late 2017 and early 2018 by the Treviso-based FABRICA with international designers-in-residence.

In the framework of FRAGILITAS, the Design for [every]one exhibition is the result of three workshops that will take place in Liege and Kortrijk with students of industrial design at ESA Saint-Luc and Howest, and with children of the Etienne Meylaers Special Education Institute in Liege.
Still within the framework of FRAGILITAS: the exhibition Precarious Architecture & Design will host an installation by the architect Paolo Cascone resulting from his long-term research on the work of mines and immigration. It is created and complemented by a series of workshops on digital fabrication and semi-fluid materials, which are being held in collaboration with the University of Liege/Faculty of Architecture and CEC Liège (Centre of Expression and Creativity), with architecture students and ceramists in August 2018.
In the same context, in 2017-18 the students of the ULiège/Faculty of Architecture have developed research on facing/cladding and on architectural modules, generating a relationship between the museum and public space.

The curator: Nawal Bakouri
An independent curator and design consultant, Bakouri is a founding member and coordinator of the socialdesign platform. Her research focuses on social design, design and care, and the exhibition as a social space. Bakouri has taught history and design theory at both l’Esam Caen-Cherbourg and the Académie Charpentier in Paris. In 2016, she formed a think tank on design and care and, with working groups of the socialdesignplatform, initiated and led several workshops and projects on the issues of design in the field of health, including space ethics in the region of Ile-de-France.

During the International Design Biennale of Saint-Etienne in 2017, she curated an exhibition on the representation of ageing and illness: The Expression of Care. Bakouri has written extensively on graphic design and social design, and for seven years was the director of Galerie Anatome, the only permanent exhibition space for graphic design in France.

List of participants:
Sarah Ahart (USA)
Roxane Andrès (FR)
Gianni Arduini & Marco Frigerio (IT)
Martin Barraud & Yohann Simonnot, Chaire Idis (FR)
Yves Béhar/Fuse project (CH/US)
Sandrine Bender & Alizée Gottardo (FR)
Molly Bonnell (USA)
Elodie Brisset (FR)
Buurtzorg (NL)
Kevin Chiam (SG)
Dani Clode (UK)
Isabelle Daëron/France Alzheimer (FR)
Quentin de Coster (BE)
Sophie de Oliveira Barata (UK)
Pierre-Luc Deniel & Gui Perrier (FR)
Julia Marina Cunha (BR)
Elium Studio/Withings/Nokia (FR/FI)
Ever Life Design by Thermomat (IT)
GestualScript (FR)
Monica Graffeo (IT)
Grand Corps Malade & Mehdi Idir (FR)
Marie-Ange Guilleminot (FR)
Leah Heiss/Keely Macarow (AU)
Sara Hendren (USA)
IOL (BE)
Sophie Larger & Vincent Lacoste (FR)
Lanzavecchia + Wai (IT/SG)
Mathieu Lehanneur (FR)
Betty Lujan (FR)
Stéphanie Marin (FR)
Viktoria Modesta (LV/UK)
Michael Noer (DK)
Nelson Noll (UK)
Nord architect (DK)
Rie Nørregaard (DE/USA)
Open Bionics (UK)
Opendot (IT)
OXO Good grids (USA)
Petits-frères des pauvres (FR)
Alissa Rees (NL)
Thonik (NL)
Reto Togni (CH)
büro uebele (DE)
Thomas Vancraeynest (BE)
Sugie Satoshi & Junpei Naito/Personal Electric (JP/USA)

The curator: Lieven De Couvreur
With an educational background in industrial design engineering that includes a PhD in participatory prototyping, De Couvreur has been instrumental in leading D4E1, a Belgium-based research and education project at Howest Kortrijk – Industrial Design Center – Industrial Product Design. It aims to bridge the gap between open design and assistive technology through co-design. Co-constructionis applied as an incremental personalisation process that simultaneously involves design team members, patients, and occupational therapists, blending the boundaries of make time and use time. The use of product hacking and self-regulation techniques enable the co-design of products that are adaptive to the skills and emergent challenges of unique disabled users, and their stakeholders.

For the exhibition, De Couvreur is assisted by Katrien De Schepper.

List of participants:
The objects will come from a series of workshops taking place from March to June 2018 in Howest Kortrijk and ESA Saint-Luc Liège, with professors and students of industrial design from both schools. One of the workshops will be held in Liege with children at Etienne Meylaers, a special education institute. The purpose of this art therapy workshop is to create an object or a range of tools adapted to the abilities of children with cognitive disabilities attending the school.

Partner schools:
Howest Kortrijk – Centre of Industrial Design; ESA Saint-Luc Liège – Faculty of Industrial Design; Etienne Meylaers Institute, Liege (BE).

Partner organisation:
Designregio Kortrijk (BE)

Sponsor:
Solidaris (BE)

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Curator:
Jean-Philippe Possoz (Liege, BE)
An architect trained at ISA St-Luc in Brussels. In 1997, Possoz co-founded the ARJM office with three friends, while working as an interim architect at the studio of Peter Hebbelinck and Alain Richard. Following this, he set off for Iceland, where he spent two years. In 2002 he attained a professional post-graduate diploma in architecture and sustainable development (EPFL-EAT-UCL), resuming practice in Liege by renewing his collaboration with the architect Alain Richard under the auspices of the latter’s aa-ar company. In 2007, he joined the University of Liege/Faculty of Architecture as a part-time lecturer. He is currently in charge of a ‘design-build’ workshop based on the economy of means and the social role of the architect.

For the exhibition, Possoz is assisted by Nicolas Bomal, a Liege-based documentary photographer and artist.

List of participants:
ACTES & CITÉS – Cyrille Hanappe (FR)
ALIVE architecture – Petra Pfermenges (BE)
Atelier 16 – Lionel Motch (BE)
Atelier 4/5 – Florent Grosjean (BE)
Atelier studio 1/1 Empreinte sociétale (BE)
Atelier Timur Ersen – Timur Ersen & Pauline Semon (FR)
Emanuel Bayon (FR)
Claude Cattelain (BE)
CodesignLab – Paolo Cascone (IT)
HKU – Olivier Ottevaere & John Lin (CN)
Clément Mazurier (FR)
Hélène Subrémon (FR)
TYIN tegnestue Architects – Yashar Hanstad & Andreas Gjertsen (NO)
Henk Wildschut (NL).

Another series of objects will come from two workshops that will take place at the University of Liege during the summer of 2018 with architecture students. The installation of Paolo Cascone will be developed in a training workshop open to architecture students, designers and ceramists, organised in August by the CEC Liège (see below).

Partner school: University of Liege/Faculty of Architecture

Partner organisations: CEC Liege

During a series of workshops, Paolo Cascone will show how to use composite materials and ceramics as ahigh-performance technique in the field of design and architecture.  The project is part of a research that the Italian architect has been conducting for 10 years, in which he has examined the relationship between natural materials, local resources, and new digital manufacturing processes.

During the workshops, several earth mixtures will be experimented with to manufacture structural components. These will then be assembled and form an installation that will feature in Precarious Architecture & Design.  This research intends to propose a different way of approaching the topic of migratory flows that the history of the mines has been generating across Europe and at the same time it aims at contributing to the debate on the consequences of the process of deindustrialisation of these regions.

Paolo Cascone is an architect, teacher and researcher trained at the AA School of London. His work explores a new interdisciplinary approach to ecological architecture, developing a new paradigm between nature and artifice, theory and technique, traditional technologies and digital culture. In 2007, he founded CODESIGNLAB (www.codesignlab.org) in Paris, whose projects are frequently published in international architecture journals and exhibited in several European design museums. Cascone currently runs the African Fabbers School (AFS): the first school of urban ecology, self-construction, and digital manufacturing in Africa.

CEC – Centre d’Expression et de
Créativité – Province de Liège
rue des Croisiers, 15
4000 Liege
www.provincedeliege.be
Led by: Paolo Cascone (IT)
Dates: 1 – 10 August & 22 – 31 August 2018

Confessions is the portrait form that Fabrica asks its team members to use when they tell us about themselves. It is a candid dialogue with the world and with oneself. The ‘confessions’ are the self-portraits of the Fabrica project’s team members: freestyle, taking the form of objects, images, videos, or any other form of expression that demonstrates the team members’ authenticity and attests to their unique vision of themselves.

Fabrica is a communication research centre established in 1994. Situated in Treviso, Italy, it was conceived by Luciano Benetton and Oliviero Toscani, and is financed by the Benetton Group.

Today more than ever, Fabrica’s research is a cross-disciplinary practice wherein communication interacts with other vital sectors like social and environmental sciences, food, cinema, art, poetry, journalism, design, spirituality, music, politics, economics, neuroscience, psychology and writing, and is alert to the changes and trends of modern society.

Fabrica  team:
Carl Rethmann
Marcin Liminowicz
Salik Ansari
Gianni Baha
Daniele Tonon 
Sebastian Anastasiei 
Christian Coppe 
Mattia Mura 
Alessandro Favaron 
Davide Arban
Federica Belli
Riccardo Fontanel 
Giovanni Bottan 
William Grotto 
Ivanka Yakovyna 
Pablo Nicolas
Martina Perissinotto

Directed by: 
Oliviero Toscani
Michel Mallard
Andrea Maragno
Marco Rubiola

Production: 
Monica Lanaro
Dee Group​

The cultural role of European schools in orientating the direction of design and its social and economic impact are crucial. Design education exceeds disciplinary boundaries, opening itself to multiple visions and a critical approach of the real world. As a result, it is assigned an active and unique pedagogical role.

The creation of artefacts and prototypes generated and/or destined to be put into place, bestows the schools with the role of laboratories of the possible, experimenting and researching, inclusive and open. The object here becomes the expression of an educational journey shared between teacher and student, in a dialogue that is often in conflict between the norm and liberty. The object, the artefact, enables accessibility and understanding. It is an embodiment of a theoretical and experimental process, providing a connection between school and society, and a public conversation between the design and its users.

Following a call for entries, an international jury will assess the submitted projects and make a selection that best represents current-future trends, methodologies and issues. The resulting exhibition is to be based on the thematic clusters that arise from the selection process.
The selection committee will award four prizes, one in each of the following categories: international, Euregio Meuse-Rhine, Wallonia-Brussels Federation, and Wallonia-Brussel Higher Education.

The awards ceremony will take place in the exhibition venue on 4 October 2018 during the press preview.

Participating schools:
Belgium: Arba-Esa Brussels, Arts2 Mons, ENSAV La Cambre Brussels, ERG Brussels, ESA Saint-Luc Brussels, Liege & Tournai, HEPL Lige, KASK Ghent, LUCA Campus C-Mine Genk, LUCA Campus Ghent, PXL-MAD Hasselt, The School Hasselt, UGent, UHasselt, VOMO Thomas More University College Mechelen
Germany: Gut Rosenberg Aachen
France: ENSA Nancy, ENSAD Paris, ENSADLAB Paris, ESAD Reims, ESAD Saint-Etienne, IN SITU LAB Strasbourg, Université de Nîmes
Ireland: NCAD School of Design Dublin
Italy: Abadir Academy Catania, Politecnico di Milano
The Netherlands: Design Academy Eindhoven, Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts and Design
Sweden: Lund University of Industrial Design

The New (Learning) Objects
What is the most crucial issue that design schools have to face in years to come? The answer is not new. In 1919, Walter Gropius wrote the programme of the Staatliche Bauhaus in Weimar. Then as now, cross-disciplinary adaptable skills were fundamental. Design schools are, and must remain, laboratories of the possible. Both students and professors should be open to dialogue and discussion within an experimental educational journey. The New (Learning) Objects is the result of an international call for entries, illustrating the cultural role of European schools in educating future designers. The 77 selected projects are largely from students on Master’s programmes, giving rise to six conceptual clusters: Transmit, Produce, Learn, Share, Better Living Together and Contemplate. The objects, services and systems will enable people to encounter situations differently, to imagine solutions they hadn’t thought of before, and to change and find new ways of doing things – the essence of tomorrow’s design education. An international jury has awarded four prizes from the submitted entries.

The selection committee:

Anna Bernagozzi, Chair of the Jury, freelance journalist, design consultant, professor(FR)
Andreas Beitin, director of Ludwig Forum Aachen(DE)
Evelien Bracke, curator, Design Museum Gent(BE)
Virginio Briatore, philosopher, freelance journalist(IT)
Laure Capitani, WBDM – Wallonie-Bruxelles Design Mode(BE)
Cyrielle Doutrewe, Wallonie Design(BE)
Josyane Franc, Cité du Design & International Biennale of Design of Saint-Etienne, UNESCO Creative Cities Network, Cumulus(FR)
Tiago Krusse, Design Magazine(PT)
Jean-Michel Leclercq, Gael Maison(BE)
Isabelle Neuray, Province of Liège – Culture(BE)
Inge Vranken, Flanders DC for Design(BE)

The prizes:
Wallonia-Brussels Federation – Culture:
Géometrie Variable – Anne-Sophie Muller – ARBA-ESA Bruxelles
‘The jury praises the quality of the research, and the richness and flexibility of the collection, which wants to set an example for the textile industry of tomorrow in terms of its values.’
Wallonia-Brussels Federation – Higher Education:
Unis Son – Jacques Ernotte – ESA Saint-Luc Liège
‘The jury awarded this prize because of the importance that these type of devices will have in the creation of new pedagogical approaches, fostering children’s desire for learning through creativity and sociability from a young age.’

Euregio Meuse-Rhine:
Nomadlab – Emma Ribbens – LUCA Campus C-Mine Genk
‘The jury has acknowledged this project for its universal character, its ability to develop children’s learning abilities and adaptability to a wide variety of contexts.’

International:
Cre(a)te – Alessandra Saporita – ABADIR Academy, Catania
‘The jury wanted to highlight the project’s ability to generate social inclusion through design, creating employment opportunities that can enhance the talent and know-how of migrants.’

In the call for projects to European design schools, launched in 2017, teachers were asked to propose student projects that best represented the educational vision of their school and course. The following texts are excerpts from the written motivations of both the teachers and their students. These words, which accompany each project, are efforts to communicate and share the teaching methodology, and show how the students take ownership of it.

INSTALLATION IN THE CLOISTER OF THE MUSÉE DE LA VIE WALLONNE

Curators: Jérémy Jonchéray & Benjamin Dupuis – Fig. (BE)
Flags are symbols, message carriers, images of belonging to a group… During the first two editions of Fig., Liege’s annual international graphic festival, carte blanche was given to selected professional graphic designers to create a flag and question it as more than a graphic object.

This installation will present a selection of those flags made between 2016 and 2018.

Invited designers:
Amina Saâdi (BE)
Artisan Graphique (BE)
Benoît Bodhuin (FR)
Geoffrey Brusatto (BE)
Château Fort Fort (FR)
D.A.C. (BE)

Erberby (BE)

Feed (BE)
Landrivon Félicité (FR)
Flag (CH)
Formes Vives (FR)
François Godin (BE)
gr20 (FR)
Ines Cox (BE)
Jan & Randoald (BE)
JULIE GELON (BE)
Kidnap Your Designer (BE)
LA VILLA HERMOSA (BE)
Loraine Furter (BE)
NicolasPasquereau (FR)
NNstudio SNC (BE)
Or Type (IS)
PLMD – pleaseletmedesign (BE)
Eckert Samuel (FR)
Sarah Boris (UK)
Signes du quotidien (BE)
Stéréo Buro (FR)
Structure Bâtons (FR)
Studio Debie (BE)
StudioSpass (NL)
SUPERO (CH)
Surface Studio (FR)
Synthèse (BE)
Tom Henni (FR)
Velvetyne Type Foundry (FR)
Vincent Mathy (BE)
Warriors Studio(UK)

Reviewing various aspects of the work of eight Liège-based designers, the exhibition will approach these themes and many others. There will be objects, products, finished works, but also ongoing reflections, sketches, drafts, processes and journeys that designers implement in order to go beyond fragilities and develop strengths.

Wallonie Design is the organisation that promotes Wallonia as a driving force for sustainable and economic development. Its aim is to increase the use of design and its methods within Walloon companies and to promote design in its various facets.

Participants
Olivier Debie
Lionel Delatte
DesignWithGenius
Jimmy De Angelis
Romy Di Donato
NNstudio
Frédéric Richard
Lucie Vanroy

Job’in Design
During the Triennale, Job’in Design will organise a moment of meeting/debate. The eight participating designers will talk about their personal experience of fragility as a creative tool.

16 October: 18.00 — 20.00h
Free entrance
Compulsory registration: www.jobindesign.be

OBJET DE COLLABORATION
workshop & exhibition

Fragilitas here implies the fragility of social bonds, wherein exceptional know-how is lost, and social and cultural fragility is exposed.
The non-profit Les Drapiers seeks to promote textile know-how from the Middle East and other regions.

By encouraging the exchange and the meeting between people, techniques and cultures, Denise Biernaux, owner of the gallery, Coralie Miessen, textile designer, the Red Cross centre of Ans (represented by MC Piette) and Banneux (represented by Eurydiane Bukuru), will work with asylum seekers, heirs of these techniques.

The acknowledgement and transmission of these skills is the red thread of this project, in which workshops will be open to all.

SUCHAN KINOSHITA (JPN)  & DAVID POLZIN (DE)
ALEVTINA KAKHIDZE (UKR)
Drawings — Installations — Sketches — Sculptures — Environment

An exhibition devoted to two artists, one from Japan and the other from Ukraine, which are connected by a daily practice that seeks to solve problems through a visual language.

Both deal with themes of war, incommunicability, the wished for contrary, and poverty. Discover practical and poetic solutions…

REPAIR(S)

Photography — Engraving — Sculpture — Embroidery — Lace

At the beginning, there are the meetings; three people, three worlds talking to each other; shared concerns, life pathways that understand each other, gestures that look alike.

The fragility, the wounds, the memory and its traces, lead to a joyful and creative spirit that transforms, that repairs. Here we see the desire to create together, to repair together, and to give birth to a world which shows that. It takes different forms: photography, engraving, sculpture, embroidery, lace… because any means are fine to achieve one’s goals: repairing, repairing oneself, and easing the pain.

With: Cathy Alvarez (BE), Véronique Martinelli (BE) , Véronique Renier (BE)

VORTEX — CORTEX
(TEMPORARY ISOLATION PART 1)
In-situ installation by Djos Janssens

This project is divided into two distinct parts and is situated between two particular states of consciousness: contemplation and reflection. The artist puts in place several devices that work on different levels of interpretation and temporal perception. Janssens plays on the image, real or fictional, moving or fixed. This creates a dialogue with the viewer, an active member of the work, and generates hypnotic effects. Whose will is it? Janssens installs what he calls a ‘reflective consciousness’, a relationship of self to oneself…

Want to discover more about Djos Janssens? Then see you in Maastricht!

THE GUESTS OF OUR GUEST ARE OUR GUESTS
Exhibition with young Syrian, Afghan, Belgian and French artists, curated by Laurence Dervaux

Laurence Dervaux, the artist invited by La Châtaigneraie, extends the invitation to young Syrian, Afghan, Belgian and French artists, create an artistic and multicultural dialogue around the notion of fragility. This project has been driven by Dervaux’s desire to actively
respond to themes regarding the movement of people and openness to others.

With: Benoit Bastin (BE), Priscilla Beccarri (BE), Laurence Dervaux (BE), Abdullah Hakawati (SYR), Sulafa Hijazi (SYR), Omar Ibrahim (SYR), Kubra Khademi (AFG), Charlotte Louage (FR), Olivia Mortier (BE), Laurent Quillet (FR), Mirella Younes (SYR)

A portfolio workshop for designers in the Euregio

How to create a good portfolio? What are the specific requirements of the job market, for online applications and for exhibitions? Are there any differences

when applying to the Netherlands, Belgium or Germany? If yes, what are they? How can a portfolio satisfy these different criteria? To whom should I send and show my portfolio?

The portfolio workshop for designers has exactly this focus. It provides young designers in the Euregio with the tools and knowledge they will need to enter different design markets. All the questions above will be discussed and highlighted in a panel discussion with relevant representatives (curator, initiator of an online platform, design company). Alongside this, participants will also have the chance to present and show their portfolio to several stakeholders from the whole Euregio. If you are recent design graduate or graduating soon, grab this chance!

The project is developed by The Artist and the Others in partnership with Hellodesignertour, Cube Design Museum, Wallonie Design and RECIPROCITY.

RESEARCH/ACTION – WELCOME TO_

Imagining the future of a neighbourhood through a design process is now a practice adopted by numerous cities across Europe and the rest of the world. In this sense, the designer transmits the ability to create, imagine, and modify the dynamics that discourage collective life and a sense of security.
Tapping into creativity’s capacity to intervene in the social context, the designer’s role is that of a vector of possible changes.

The third edition of this research/action will be concentrated in the neighbourhood around the future Bavière Cultural Hub development, a key part of Liege’s urban and cultural revitalisation. Led by Nik Baerten and Virginia Tassinari, these social innovation design experts have accompanied Welcome to_ since its first outing.

In order to guarantee the continuity of the work in the field, the project will be carried out in collaboration with the staff of the Chiroux Provincial Library (management and other employees); officials of the Province’s Culture department; Aux Livres, Citoyens!; and teachers & students of ESA Saint-Luc Liège, Social Design Master, Theory & Mediation and Data Visualisation and BA Graphic techniques of Haute Ecole de la Province de Liège in Seraing.

The research, developed over the academic year 2017-18, will result in a final project that echoes the active participation of the local inhabitants. It will not be the subject of a formal exhibition, but rather a site-specific presentation of the processes and objectives achieved, symbolised by a series of urban installations.

The School presents: 

Le Petit Festival des Choses Grandes

Let us all celebrate the evening of Friday 19 October at Place Jehan le Bel in the wonderful neighbourhood of Bavière. The School has been researching, creating and making in 5 urban locations in this neighbourhood. Improving what is already there, or finding a new treasure for the locals to nurture. Silence, Play, View, Food and a Moment of Performance. All comes together that Friday between 18 and 22h. 

18h 
• A guided tour will bring you to Place Jehan le Bel (start / Finish), the Octopus crossroad of Bavière, Place Ste Barbe, La Maison Liègeoise, Rue de la Loi and Rue de la Commune roundabout. 5 locations, 5 city and community improving gifts are presented.

19h30 
• A big tasty feast of food and drinks at a special community container at Place Jehan le Bel

21h 
• Music! A concert and performance of the wonderful and Finnish duo ISLAJA & Tatu Rönkkö. With the support of the beautiful Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux. ♥ 

This project of The School x Liège is part of RECIPROCITY design liège.

A unique moment of exchange and debate around the theme of fragility and precariousness, ethical responsibility, and the involvement of the creative sector in terms of social participation. The curators of the exhibitions presented in La Boverie and the Musée de la Vie wallonne discuss the issues with international guests, representatives of a multidisciplinary activist movement, and passionate advocates of architecture, design, sociology and the humanitarian sector.

SPEAKERS

1 / NIK BAERTEN & VIRGINIA TASSINARI (BE) , Pantopicon (BE) – Curators Welcome to_Bavière – EN

Since 2012, Welcome to_ has focused on the search for viable and sustainable solutions through the methodology and practice of co-design. Its discoveries aim to generate projects that lead to citizen awareness and participation, in an effort to improve the quality of life of a community.  For this 2018 edition they focused on the Outremeuse neighbourhood in Liège.

Curators Nik Baerten & Virginia Tassinari, of Pantopicon (BE), a foresight & design studio, collaborated for this project with teachers and students of ESA Saint-Luc and the HEPL of Liège. www.pantopicon.be

2 / JOHN BINGHAM-HALL (UK), Theatrum Mundi – Voi[e,x,s] Chapelle Charbon #1: reflections on site performance  – EN

This presentation will ask how can performed sound and movement, which leave no physical trace in a space, change the public value of a terrain vague, using a short film of a performance created in Paris in collaboration between the opera company Cie MPDA – Alexandra Lacroix, composer Marta Gentilucci, and Theatrum Mundi.

Dr John Bingham-Hall is Director of Theatrum Mundi, a London-based centre that aims to expand the crafts of city–making by stimulating collaboration between artists and urbanists. Through academic research, publishing, and cultural programming his work explores how the public realm of cities is produced through media, culture, and space.
http://voiexs.fr/  http://theatrum-mundi.org/

3 / NAWAL BAKOURI (FR)- Commissaire FRAGILITAS – Handle with Care – EN

Curating the exhibition Handle with Care, Nawal Bakouri regards design as a laboratory of objects, spaces, graphics and services, but above all, as an agent by which an experience can be transformed. This part of Fragilitas presents a panorama of devices that shows that design can initiate a new experience of care and of our relationship to care.

Nawal Bakouri (Paris, France), has taught at a number of design schools in France and is as an independent cura-tor and design consultant. She is a founding member and coordinator of Socialdesign Plateform (www.plateforme-socialdesign.net), whose research focuses on social design, design and care, and the exhibition as a social space.

4 / ALISSA REES (NL), designer, Humanising of the White Building – EN

By combining her long experience in hospital with being a current designer, Rees came up with twenty concepts to humanise hospitals. In this presentation she takes you through her personal experiences, that she turned into valuable products for a bigger audience.

Rees is a concept and healthcare designer. Rees was the winner of the Accenture innovation Award 2017 and the innovation- and best overall prize on the Brains Award 2017, with her project ‘IV-Walk’, a portable IV-pole that stimulates mobility in hospitals. She presented her work in cities as Milan, Paris, Amsterdam and Las Vegas. www.alissarees.com

5 / JEAN-PHILIIPPE POSSOZ (BE), Commissaire FRAGILITAS – Precarious
Architecture & Design, curator – EN

Design and architecture mix and share their specific fields of knowledge and skills: their way of thinking, anticipating, and intentions to transform the world through micro-acts of creation, as seen in objects and spaces.

Jean-Philippe Possoz (Liège, Belgium) is an architect trained at the ISA St-Luc in Brussels. In 1997, he co-founded the office ARJM Architecture & Urbanism while working as an interim architect at the studio of Pierre Hebbelinck and Alain Richard. In 2002, he attained a professional post-graduate diploma in architecture and sustain-able development, resuming practice in Liège by renewing his collaboration with Alain Richard. In 2007, he joined the Faculty of Architecture/ULiège. He is currently in charge of a design-build workshop based on the economy of means and the social role of the architect.

6 / CYRILLE HANAPPE (FR), architecte Actes & Cités – La Ville Acceuillante

EN – The Welcoming City

Calais, Grande Synthe, Paris. The arrival and the growing numbers of people in cities living in precarious situations (Migrants, Homeless people, social Workers, etc.), raises fundamental questions about ways to live them, to concieve them, to think them. Shanty towns, squats, camps, wasted lands are the components of urban framework, must be recognised as such and either as warts to eradicate. There is an issue of emancipatory recognition of each person within cities.

Cyrille Hanappe, has a PhD in Architecture and is an architect and engineer. He presides the Actes & Cités Association which works for the dignity of the living environment. He is Lecturer at École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris-Belleville and Head of Education for the Specialisation Diploma for Architecture and Major Risks in the same school. He’s also an associated architect for the AIR-Cyrille Hanappe & Olivier Leclercq agency.
www.actesetcites.org  www.air-architecture.com

7 / PAOLO CASCONE (IT), designer, founder CODESIGNLAB – The Miner’s House – FR

During a series of workshops, Paolo Cascone showed how to use composite materials and ceramics as a high-performance technique in the field of design and architecture.  The project is part of a research that the Italian architect has been conducting for 10 years, in which he has examined the relationship between natural materials, local resources, and new digital manufacturing processes.  An installation will feature in Precarious Architecture & Design.  His research intends to propose a different way of approaching the topic of migratory flows that the history of the mines has been generating across Europe and at the same time it aims at contributing to the debate on the consequences of the process of deindustrialisation of these regions.

Paolo Cascone is an architect, teacher and researcher trained at the AA School of London. His work explores a new interdisciplinary approach to ecological architecture, developing a new paradigm between nature and artifice, theory and technique, traditional technologies and digital culture. In 2007, he founded CODESIGNLAB  in Paris, whose projects are frequently published in international architecture journals and exhibited in several European design museums. Cascone currently runs the African Fabbers School (AFS): the first school of urban ecology, self-construction, and digital manufacturing in Africa. www.codesignlab.org

8 / LIEVEN DE COUVREUR (BE), Howest -FRAGILITAS – D4E1, Curator -EN
In the exhibition  Design for [every]one, design is a mean of co-evolution, a dynamic approach that builds upon co-creativity and allows objects to be adapted. This takes into account the person, their characteristics, and what they want to create.  Design for [every]one shows design that goes beyond mass and standardised production exists. It presents an ‘open design’ which hacks, adapts, corrects, rethinks and/or redesigns, in order to give to each of us, whatever our backgrounds, the opportunity to do what we would like. 

With an educational background in industrial design engineering that includes a PhD in participatory prototyping, Lieven De Couvreur (Ghent, Belgium) has been instrumental in leading D4E1, a Belgium-based research and education project at Howest Kortrijk – Industrial Design Center – Industrial Product Design. http://designforeveryone.howest.be/

9 / FRANCESCA OSTUZZI (IT/BE), UGent – Open-ended Design. Intentional imperfections to support change – EN

Design is an intentional act that aims at modifying future realities. One of the problems of this complex process of creation is that we often design under the belief that only expected things will happen. In reality, our design outcomes are themselves in a precarious state, being anything but static, predictable or under control. Open-ended Design proposes insights on how, by embracing the unavoidability of imperfections in our outcomes, we might be able to trigger and support more positive change.  

Francesca Ostuzzi has a PhD in Industrial Design Engineering Technology and works as doctor assistant in the Industrial Design Engineering curriculum, at Ghent University. Her research interests include sustainability, design, the value of imperfection, open-ended design and the application of such topics and tools into co-generative and open processes.
http://open-ended-design.com  https://ea18.ugent.be/members/34/ 

10 / ANNA BERNAGOZZI (FR)  – Reframing design pedagogy – The New (Learning) Objects, curator – FR

The most crucial issue that design schools will have to face in the years to come is that of offering to future designers the capacity of deeply understanding the society they live in by co-creating the right design tools and objects that will improve tomorrow’s life quality in a sustainable way. We as academia must be capable of nurishing and strengthen their natural holistic approach to society.  As all good designers, they must become keen observers and attentive facilitators and translators of the ‘intelligence of the context’.

Anna Bernagozzi is Professor of design theory and history at the ENSAD – École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Paris since 2004 where she’s also head of the Master in Object Design. She is also design consultant for different design editors and brands in semiotic, trend, marketing and focus groups case studies for different international agencies and companies, editor and journalist for different design magazines and curator of several exhibitions.

11 / OLIVIERO TOSCANI (IT), creative director, Fabrica – curator Confessions – EN

Confessions is the portrait form that Fabrica asks its team members to use when they tell us about themselves. It is a candid dialogue with the world and with oneself. The ‘confessions’ are the self-portraits of the Fabrica project’s team members: freestyle, taking the form of objects, images, videos, or any other form of expression that demonstrates the team members’ authenticity and attests to their unique vision of themselves.

Fabrica is a communication research centre established in 1994. Situated in Treviso, Italy, it was conceived by Luciano Benetton and Oliviero Toscani, creative director.  Today more than ever, Fabrica’s research is a cross-disciplinary practice wherein communication interacts with other vital sectors like social and environmental sciences, food, cin-ema, art, poetry, journalism, design, spirituality, music, politics, economics, neuroscience, psychology and writing, and attests to the changes and trends of modern society.  www.fabrica.it

12 / ANYA SIROTA (US), architect, Akoaki – (In)vulnerabilities – EN

Critical insight into localized sources of economic and social precarity can deliver provocative design tools in the form of contextually calibrated hacks. Working predominantly in vulnerable urban environments, the Detroit-based architectural design studio Akoaki has explored ways to counter perceived fragilities by inverting expectation, tuning aesthetics, building social enterprises, and pirating latent power structures. Through the lens of the Detroit Cultivator Project, the talk will explore emergent techniques for transforming susceptibilities into collective affordances.

Anya Sirota is an architectural designer and principal of Detroit-based experimental studio Akoaki. Her work, synthesizing aesthetics, social enterprise, and cultural programming, explores ways to materialize collective utopian projects in complex urban scenarios. In parallel, she directs the Michigan Architecture Prep Studio and teaches architecture at the University of Michigan. www.akoaki.com

Attention !
La conférence se déroulera en français et l’anglais, sans traduction simultanée.
The conference will be held in French and in English, without simultaneous translation.

VIDEOS OF THE CONFERENCE:

Nawal Bakouri Handle With Care

Alissa Rees Humanising of the White Building

Jean-Philippe Possoz & Cyrille Hanappe Precarious Architecture & Design / La ville accueillante

Lieven De Couvreur D4E1

Francesca Ostuzzi Open-ended Design

Nik Baerten & Virginia Tassinari Welcome to_Bavière

Anya Sirota (In)vulnerabilities

Paolo Cascone The Miner’s House

John Bingham-Hall Voi[e,x,s]

Anna Bernagozzi Recadrer la pédagogie du design

Fabrica – Monica Lanaro Confessions

DIALOGUE

Organisation: Wallonie Design

Concept: Frederik Delbart & Quentin de Coster

This conference will highlight the experience of designers as part of a collaborative project with artisans or companies. It will present, in particular, the results of a workshop organised at the Keramis-Ceramics Centre by Dialogue (Frederik Delbart and Quentin de Coster).
In this case, nine Belgian designers were invited to experiment with a material and technique for the first time, working alongside a ceramist.