Romanian Design Week 2020, an event presented by The Institute and UniCredit Bank, will take place between 11th-20th of September and will develop a special edition, meant to showcase the essential role of design in envisioning a better future, in a moment when creativity became more important than ever. The festival focuses on CHANGE, the main theme that has already been announced at the beginning of the year, upgrading its speech and the presented projects according to both changes and initiatives that the creative industries developed during the pandemic, under the name of CHANGE 2.0.
“The design represents an approach, a way of turning interdictions and challenges into solutions and models. This is why, now more than ever, it became an essential tool in redefining not just the objects, flows and relationships, but the future and the society entirely. As the international community of design admits, it is important to stick together during these complicated times and bring in the foreground the creative and cultural fields that need our support more than ever”, stated Andrei Borțun, CEO The Institute.
The main destination of Romanian Design Week 2020 will be Combinatul Fondului Plastic, a place with a special history.
By virtue of a strategic partnership between the Union of Fine Arts and The Institute, that aims to promote local creative industries, but also young Romanian artists, Romanian Design Week 2020 will showcase a series of exhibitions inside Combinatul Fondului Plastic in Bucharest. The complex situated on Băiculești street was built between 1966-1972 for accomodating the production activity of CFP. Today, next to the spaces destinated to producing supplies and support materials for the art industry, the complex also includes a few art galleries and exhibitional spaces such as: Sector 1 Gallery, Senate Gallery, Nicodim Gallery, UNAgaleria (the exhibitional space of the Bucharest National University of Arts) or Sandwich.
The Romanian Design Week exhibitions reunited under the CHANGE 2.0 theme and held in the spaces inside Combinatul Fondului Plastic aim to (re)investigate the role of design as it is today: a marathon of projects and initiatives outlined around an actual challenge, a series of conceptual design projects, but also a range of projects designed for a better future, next to a series of installations and urban interventions which role is to rise problems and find solutions for current situations.
Inside the design park developed at Combinatul Fondului Plastic, visitors are going to discover:
- Possible Realities, a conceptual design exbition that partially keeps the structure and projects selected for May, when the eighth edition of Romanian Design Week was supposed to take place, but also showcases the creative worlds behind them and questions the role of a designer nowadays. The exhibition will take place at SENATE. The concept and the architecture of the exhibition is going to be signed together with Attila Kim Architects.
- Antifragile, an exhibition that presents new concerns in the design world, by both initiatives and projects that had a positive contribution in the current situation caused by the pandemic. It will take place at Sector 1 Gallery and will be developed in partnership with Zeppelin Design (Cosmina Goagea, Justin Baroncea, Constantin Goagea);
- A punctual series of interventions and installations outside the complex, that aim to attest ways in which creativity can have a contribution on overcoming current challenges and also show the role of both design and architecture in generating change.
Romanian Design Week is going to take into consideration all the regulations in force at the moment of its happening in order to guarantee the public safety. The large area that Combinatul Fondului Plastic presents, favorable for social distancing, was a priority when choosing the space for this year’s edition.
Beside the exhibitions and interventions from Combinatul Fondului Plastic, this year Romanian Design Week will also have digital content, where the public could see actual projects, but also scenarios and imagined projects, concerns and sketches made by Romanian designers, out of the desire of showcasing to the public new approaches and attitudes of local creatives, but also out of the hope that their ideas can have a real impact towards CHANGE. Few of these events that will happen entirely online are going to be Online Design Market and the ones dedicated to professionals.
RDW 2020 will hold numerous events of small proportions, with small audiences, included in the Design Go programme, designed to direct visitors to different places in town in order to avoid the crowds.
Furthermore, in partnership with the British Council, under the name UK Focus, the festival prepared a series of conferences with international speakers, online, that will debate on the importance and the impact of design nowadays from the perspective of sustainability and circular economy.
The Romanian Design Week 2020 schedule also includes a new category, Design Flags, presented together with Qreator by IQOS. Thus, in the creative hub with the same name on 8A, Aviatorilor Boulevard, between 13th-20th of September, will be visited, for the first time in Romania, seven international design exhibitions, aimed to came as a completion for the creative local visions. The access for this event will respect the regulations in force present at the time and will be allowed exclusively to persons over 18 years old.
On this occasion, Qreator by IQOS becomes a partner space of Romanian Design Week 2020.
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