Global initiative to foster creativity and innovation
Imagine the world of tomorrow and imagine the soundscape. Will it be beeping computers, electric cars, giant wind turbines and spacecraft?
Will it be a noiseless, utopian world of clean, environmentally friendly machines, where humans can travel, communicate and experience life through the limitless possibilities of the internet, or noisy and frenetic, where nature and humanity come second?
London Design Festival
17 th -23 rd September 2012
BE OPEN, the global think tank set up to foster creativity and innovation, arrives in London for the 2012 London Design Festival on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the largest design event in the UK. The Festival’s programme attracts visitors from all over the world, and the foundation will be part of this huge showcase with a whole series of activities. BE OPEN’s events in London are part of a broader project by the think tank to explore the five traditional senses – sight, smell, taste, touch and sound – the starting point for research into the next realm, that of the sixth sense, or intuition. Sixth sense design would represent the ultimate synthesis of human sensory perception and technological genius, offering an infinite variety of sensations that would overcome the perceived limitations of design today.
The international BE OPEN Awards 2012 has attracted over 300 first-class entries from young designers around the world. Entries were received from all corners of the globe including: Afghanistan, Cuba, Ireland, South Africa, Iran, Uzbekistan, Lebanon and Vietnam.
Over the next three weeks the BE OPEN Jury will select nine shortlisted entries, three from each of the nomination categories: CAST, FORM and CITY.
Elena Baturina, Russia’s Richest Woman, on Making Her Fortune
Spear’s
August 7, 2012
Современное искусство от Базеля к Бейруту
Бизнес Стиль
July 5, 2012
Elena Baturina. Be Open
Domus
June 21, 2012
“I am not really a teacher,” says Ron Arad. A strange remark from a man who has spent 12 years as Professor of Design Products at the Royal College of Art. Especially strange when one considers that he was speaking on a platform – part of the Beopen Talks in Basel – to discuss how we educate tomorrow’s innovators. But then in his own work Arad has achieved greatness by going against the grain. His Concrete Stereo (1983) was a hi-fi coated with protective resin, then encased in concrete before being chipped away to reveal rusting steel beneath. It is often seen as the emergence of a punk aesthetic in design: an emblem of the times. However as the Museum of Modern Art’s citation describes it, it was also “a surreal challenge to the sanctity of consumer electronics.”
This September sees the arrival of the BE OPEN Sound Portal in Trafalgar Square as part of the tenth anniversary of the London Design Festival 2012. Situated within one of London’s most iconic public spaces, the BE OPEN Sound Portal is an entirely new kind of installation that focuses on the design that you can’t see – that of acoustics and sound – rather than visual spectacle.
Visitors to the current exhibition at London’s Barbican Centre on the Bauhuas would be forgiven for thinking that the Bauhaus was a style. The exhibition of course contained many beautiful objects in perspex boxes. There was some detailed explanation of the desire to respond to industrial production but there was no reference – apart from a few photographs of empty studios to the fundamental point. The Bauhaus was not a style – it was a school. Jean-Louis Cohen’s The Future of Architecture since 1889 addressed this issue in a fundamental way. He explains that the school rethought the relationship between art, design and architecture. The school championed the new principles of abstract art to challenge existing building forms and then under Hannes Meyer and Mies Van Der Rohe the shapes of cities.
A prize for achievements in design education
Sandberg Institute has been selected to win the BE OPEN Inside the Academy Prize, from a shortlist of six leading European design schools: La Cambre, Belgium; Ecole Cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL), Switzerland; Hochschule Basel, Switzerland; Konstfack, Stockholm, Sweden; Sandberg Institute Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Glasgow School of Art, UK.
BE OPEN Inside the Academy – a new platform to showcase and honour recent achievements in educational approaches – at Design Miami/ Basel
The next stop on BE OPEN’s worldwide tour is Basel, for Design Miami/ Basel 2012. A new platform – BE OPEN Inside the Academy – will showcase and honour recent achievements in educational approaches that promote real-world problem solving through creative design.
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’.
