RDW Design Flags returns this year to the Romanian Design Week program, bringing a series of exhibitions, projects, and relevant creatives to the public from all around the world to the Romanian public. Developed in collaboration with cultural institutes, embassies, and cultural-creative organizations, and supported by Château Purcari, RDW Design Flags brings the contributions of international designers and architects to the forefront. From May 24th to June 2nd, these exhibitions will be showcased in the iconic building of the former Cina restaurant (Benjamin Franklin Street 10).
The RDW Design Flags format connects the local and international architecture and design sceneries, offering various themes, approaches, and representations of design and architecture from sustainable products and services to photography, traditions, contemporary technologies, and studies on urban living.
“We are glad that this year we managed to bring back the RDW Design Flags format to the festival’s program, offering visitors consistent and relevant international content, aligned with global directions and trends in design and architecture. We want to thank our partners for their support and we hope that next year even more organizations, cultural institutes, and embassies will join the endeavor so that the presence of international design at Romanian Design Week becomes a tradition,” says Raluca Mirel, Project Director of the Romanian Design Week.
Under the theme Unlock the City, the 2024 edition of the Romanian Design Week aims to explore how creativity and innovation can shape future cities and reveal their potential. The 9 exhibitions within the RDW Design Flags format bring various perspectives and approaches to contemporary design and architecture:
Ugo La Pietra. Urban arrangements for collectivity – From bollards to pavilions – showcased with the support of the Italian Cultural Institute in Bucharest, the exhibition refers to Ugo La Pietra’s research on the relationship between the individual and the environment, and especially urban collective space. Since the late 1960s, La Pietra has studied the urban territory, a formal expression of social life’s contradictions – from peripheries (Degrees of Freedom, Recovery, and Reinvention) to urban arrangements, the signs that underline the difference between domestic and urban living.
Manufacture in the Digital Era is an exhibition of textiles and fashion by DLA students from MOME Budapest, exhibited with the support of the Liszt Institute – Hungarian Cultural Center Bucharest. The works of DLA students from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME) in Budapest reflect contemporary design, where craftsmanship and manual dexterity combine with modern techniques. The ongoing research projects of the DLA students explore these themes, offering possible answers in their fields of activity such as weaving, knitting, textile design, tailoring, or fashion illustration.
Design x sustainable x desirable: French design incubator 2023 – created by VIA and presented at the Romanian Design Week with the support of the French Institute in Romania, this exhibition explores the new paths adopted by French designers, editors, and producers to create objects that respect the environment. The approximately thirty exhibited projects, divided into five themes, demonstrate new uses, materials, and innovative processes to create desirable objects that respond to questions related to a new French art of living responsibly.
Marius Vasile and Leafhopper Project (David Simon and Blanca Galindo) sign a photography exhibition that invites the public to unlock the everyday beauty of Madrid and Bucharest. In this project, specially created for RDW Design Flags and curated by the cultural management team of the Embassy of Spain in Bucharest, photographers from Romania and Spain establish a dialogue around the cities of Madrid and Bucharest, their dynamic and static elements, their inhabitants, and their daily lives. The photographs of Marius Vasile and the Leafhopper Project explore what makes cities livable and visitable spaces and confront us with a question that undoubtedly many people have asked themselves many times: how is it possible for these cities to resemble each other, although they are so different?
Swedish Design Movement. Leading the way – brings together Swedish design companies that believe that design, architecture, and fashion can accelerate progress towards a sustainable society, encouraging the demand for sustainable products and services from Sweden. The initiative is managed by the Swedish Institute in collaboration with Architects Sweden, the Swedish Fashion Association, the Swedish Federation of Wood and Furniture Industry, Svensk Form (the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design), as well as representatives from Gothenburg, West Sweden, Malmö, Stockholm, Umeå, Business Sweden, and Visit Sweden, and is exhibited at the Romanian Design Week with the support of the Embassy of Sweden in Bucharest. Exhibitors include David Design, Fogia, Reform Design Lab, VERK, A NEW SWEDEN, Atacac, maxjenny!, Swedish Stockings, Claesson Koivisto Rune Architects, Kjellander Sjöberg, Tham/Videgård, White Arkitekter, Wingårdhs, Note Design Studio, Carl Engberg.
Greener Together – Liveable Cities – We live in a fast-paced world. As the pace of urbanization accelerates, cities face enormous challenges, which may not necessarily be obvious or attractive to our daily lives, but left unaddressed, could significantly affect our lives sooner rather than later. Regardless of a city’s stage of development, concern for the quality of life of urban residents should be a guiding principle. Greener Together – Liveable Cities is a project exhibited at RDW Design Flags with the support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of Denmark in Romania.
Ibero-American Typography – The Cervantes Institute, in collaboration with the “Iberoamérica Diseña” Association, presents within RDW Design Flags an exhibition of letter design made by Ibero-American graphic artists and curated by Manuel Estrada, both to make known the moment of extraordinary creativity that this discipline is going through, and to highlight the value of letter design as a significant cultural activity, inextricably linked to writing, reading, and word, and sustainable from an economic point of view.
DesignerELE (Re)designing the world – The Cervantes Institute, in collaboration with the FIDO (Feminism in Design Office) platform, presents a selection of twelve highly relevant Spanish creators within the contemporary Spanish design scene, in all fields (product design, textiles, graphics): Marta Ayala, Eli González, Júlia Esqué, Amalia Puga, Cristina Omarrementería, Ingrid Picanyol, Inés Sistiaga, Verònica Fuerte, Miriam Miguel, Raquel Buj, Silvia Ferpal, and Elena Rohner, one of the pioneers of design in Spain. The exhibition is curated by Gloria Ruiz.
Soul of Moldova – Traditions through contemporary art – The exhibition represents the collaboration between artist Victoria Peev and fashion designer Oxana Munteanu, through the Kasandruta brand. In their creations, the two artists form a deep connection between the past and the present, a clever mix between tradition and minimalism, and contemporary art technologies.
