Global initiative to foster creativity and innovation
The BE OPEN forum explores human perception and how to design for it.
BE OPEN partners with Design Miami/ to launch the BE OPEN Forum, a portal to the future of design practice.
Each of the Forum participants practices outside the boundaries of traditional product design, utilizing food, scent, biochemistry and haptic technology to make research accessible to the global community and imagine the possibilities of design through sensory exploration.
The BE OPEN Forum at Design Miami/ reveals the sensory visions of today’s most innovative designer.
Imagine if you could design a product that appealed to the sixth sense – something that felt intuitively ‘right’. It would be a runaway success because everyone would want it, without questioning it. This is the area that the BE OPEN Foundation has chosen to research over the next year. It launched the project at the 2012 London Design Festival with a series of events that focused on the sense of sound and how to design for that.
The winner for the sound of the future is Back to the Planet
BE OPEN searched the world of today to find a series of diverse sounds that might represent the soundscape of the future. No one quite knows what we will be listening to in the future, perhaps with advances in technology our planet will be a much quieter place, with the only sounds being bleeping computers, electric cars, giant wind turbines and spacecraft. Or perhaps the soundscape will be even more chaotic than the world of today. Either way you can catch a glimpse if you listen again to our collection of sounds.
London, Wednesday 19 September: The BE OPEN Sound Portal has arrived in London’s Trafalgar Square. A mysterious, black, rubberised cube, it will host five soundscapes over the next five days so that the public can ‘switch on their hearing’ to appreciate the most advanced audio technology in the world.
Source: wallpaper.com
The ambisonic clamour of sea shanties, clattering percussion, classical guitar and lush synthetic vocals flooded the space inside the BE OPEN Sound Portal on Trafalgar Square today.
London, September 21, 2012 – Today the winners of the BE OPEN AWARDS, an international scheme for the promotion of young creative talent, were announced at 100% Design.
The winner in the CAST category is Alexandra Kharakoz from the UK, with Sonic Landscape, an interactive, real-time, sonic sculpture designed to heighten awareness about how sound is produced.
Tom Dixon’s west London canal-side HQ was the venue for BE OPEN’s first off-schedule event at the 2012 London Design Festival. Described by Dixon as a flash-market showcase of young design talent, BE OPEN SPACE consisted of eight site-specific raw-wood stands conceived by designer-engineers Pan Studio and JailMake. Their solid, practical construction made reference to pine art-transport containers while also echoing the old trade stalls of Florence’s Ponte Vecchio.
Nine talented young designers go forward to the finals of the BE OPEN Awards, which will be presented as part of the think tank’s activities during the 2012 London Design Festival.
“BE OPEN is about ‘intellectual development’, investing in the creation of added value for future generations. Our programmes are about generating original thinking from the most promising young minds of our time”, said Elena Baturina, founder of BE OPEN.
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.
