Be Open to the Future of Sound

London Design Festival 2012
19-23 September
Trafalgar Square project

BE OPEN Sound Portal
Take a journey to the heart of acoustic creativity, through a portal in Trafalgar Square

This year BE OPEN, the new global initiative to foster creativity and innovation, and the London Design Festival are co-producing a project in Trafalgar Square that focuses on the idea of ‘design you can’t see’.

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BE OPEN Experience: Story by Francesco Morace

BE OPEN Experience: Story by Francesco Morace

Francesco Morace
                                              Sociologist, writer
   

Sociologist, journalist and author of over 20 books translated into various languages, ranging in subject from trends in consumption to social change. Founder of a Research and Strategic Institute – Future Concept Lab (1989). Mr. Morace is also Professor at Domus Academy and Milan’s Politecnico. He has participated in conventions and seminars in 22 countries worldwide.

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Things Will Have to Change

Tim Abrahams
writer

Tim Abrahams is a former editor of Blueprint. He now writes for Icon, Architect’s Journal and RIBA Journal. He is also the owner of a digital publishing company and an advisor to major cultural institutions on their online strategy.

Everyone operating in the worlds of architecture, design and technology knows that the world has changed since 2008, but the job of identifying and describing exactly how is only just beginning to happen. It was the contention of the convener of the first BE OPEN conference, Francesco Morace, that three new relationships in the world of design had undergone a huge and important shift. Morace suggests that a fundamental realignment in thinking has occurred in over the issue of sustainability, the idea of happiness and perhaps most fundamentally the relationship between the local and the universal. These theories were tested by the inquiring minds of some of the leading figures in the design world.

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Sitting Uncomfortably

Tim Abrahams
writer

Tim Abrahams is a former editor of Blueprint. He now writes for Icon, Architect’s Journal and RIBA Journal. He is also the owner of a digital publishing company and an advisor to major cultural institutions on their online strategy.

The most important object in the Freud Museum in London, where the great psychoanalyst lived for just one year before he died, is clearly his couch. Draped in Persian rugs and scattered with cushions, it is on the bohemian side of mid-20th century tastes. Although insignificant in size it is impossible not to look at the piece of furniture and not think of all the dreams that have been relayed there and the neuroses diagnosed. Given that Freudian analysis prioritises relations between the subject and their parents, the familial and domestic becomes the site of the fundamental debates of existence. The couch is not just important because of his historical significance but also because of its symbolism. Anne Leibovitz has photographed it and Louise Bourgeois has exhibited alongside it.

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