20 May,  Guest Speaker – 07:00 PM – 07:30 PM 

Daan Roosegaarde Creative director of the social design lab Studio Roosegaarde, delivers unimaginable technology to the world – in the most literal way. With studios in Rotterdam and Shanghai, he develops innovative, interactive landscapes that are accomplished through the objective of pulling technology ‘out of the screen’ and integrating it into the real world. The key to accomplishing this task, believes Roosegaarde, is his Dutch attitude of artist-entrepreneur, which he considers equal parts “priest and entrepreneur” in order to perfectly merge technology and creativity. Through the creation of social designs that instinctively respond to sound and movement, he is able to pursue the widest possibilities of technological innovation. Roosegaarde is best known for his internationally awarded projects such as ‘Dune’, ‘Intimacy 2.0’ and ‘Sustainable Dance Floor’. Roosegaarde has won the Dutch Design Award, Charlotte Kohler Prijs, and Design for Asia Award and China's Most Successful Design Award. He has been the focus of exhibitions at the Tate Modern, the National Museum in Tokyo, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and various public spaces in Rotterdam and Hong Kong.

20 May, Guest Speaker – 07:30 PM – 08:00 PM

The main focus of Ms. Richter’s talk will be “cultural posters” and the sustainability aspect in poster design. Ms Richter is born in 1964, and experience as an art historian. In her 1996 dissertation she focused on the antiwar graphics of Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen. From 1997 to 2006, she served as a research associate in the Poster Collection of the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, and as curator of the same since 2006. Bettina also lectures at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste and works as a freelance writer.

20 May, Guest Speaker – 08:00 PM – 08:30 PM 

Seetal Solanki is a Materials Activist and Founder of Ma-tt-er. Ma-tt-er is a research studio, platform and consultancy that explores materials, their past and their future potential within industry and education. Believing that social and positive change can come from integrating sustainable and innovative ways of working with materials and understanding what goes behind making that material. Everything is made of something and our mission is to challenge preconceived behaviours by revealing the potential of all materials. Seetal has worked with companies such as Nissan, Nike, Levi's, United Visual Artists and Stylus amongst many others. Materials have been the underlying thread that has connected all of these experiences together forming what we now know as Ma-tt-er. www.ma-tt-er.org. 

11:00 AM – 08:30 PM 

12:00 PM – 02:00 PM 

This seminar is on Creative Research, Inclusive Design, and Communication. It explores socially-engaged design approaches for the city, addressing urbanism, creative research, and activism. It will focus on the role of designers and architects as initiators, investigators, creators, campaigners, organizers, critics and propagators of alternative urban futures. 

Seminar Program: 

- Practicing the Public by Ahmad Gharbieh

- Narrating Beirut from its Tenants Stories by Public Works

- Beirut Madinati by Beirut Madinati team members

- Open discussion   

- Break 

- Participation in Urban Design: the Case of Ajial Center in Nahr Bared Camp by Public Works

- Revisiting Dalieh: Three Design Proposals for Beirut’s Seafront by the Competition Winners

- Open discussion 

03:00 PM – 03:30 PM

After spending several months discovering KED, The Lebanese Architecture Club and MENA Design research Center architects have chosen to shed some light on the misuse of Karantina as a waste dump and its interesting history over the past years. The talk focuses on the restoration of KED and the overall design process. The main intent of KED is to be a good example that can be a part of the current social impact towards achieving and understanding sustainability. The comprehension that a sustainable utopia is never achieved led us to focus on implementing a limited number of elements such as energy, water, materials, recycling, composting, mobility, communication, use of local resources, and having collaborative efforts to the best of our ability. 

03:30 PM – 04:00 PM

theOtherDada will explain how Biophilic design can generate new relationships between the place and its inhabitants by incorporating natural elements such as light, sound, odor, weather, water, vegetation animals and landscapes.

Moreover, by asking “How does Nature design”, theOtherDada will elaborate more extensively on the opportunities offered by Biomimicry: Emulating Nature’s Genius in solving problems ranging from design, construction and organization. Design inspired by nature helps us move towards a more holistic and harmonious system of exchange generating new spatial experiments and living conditions in tune with nature.

04:00 PM - 04:30 PM

Through a journey on a number of projects, which Ana Serrano has been involved with in the last 15 years, she will question the potential of site-specific architectural and artistic interventions to enhance contemporary urban conditions in the contexts of UK and Lebanon. 

Ana Serrano is a London-based practicing architect, educator and researcher and a member of the Documentation and Conservation of Modern Movement (DO.CO.MO.MO) UK working party.

04:30 PM - 05:00 PM

The city, the architecture and the food system are complex and interrelated networks. In recent years, planners, architects, environmental scientists and the food community have globally worked on the link between the city and the necessity of green areas. 

These areas are not only environmental or decorative, they are areas used for the new concept of urban agriculture. Farming within municipal boundaries, creates a resistance to industrial agriculture and inspires a new engagement of citizens with their first source of energy: food.The need for improving the quality of urban spaces has often been answered by creating vegetable gardens and green spaces. There is a great potential to regenerate the urban landscape merging aesthetics with a wide range of new functions: that's the idea of a new kind of urban spaces where to cultivate organic products, these vegetable gardens can create new forms of aggregation, they are spaces for enlarged communities where explore new forms of interaction, of work, of social mixed uses. Farming in urban areas improve the civic life and the environmental quality of the city, and has revealed to be an increasingly popular concept.Today we face new challenges. Pressing issues regarding people and their relationship with the built environment in all its complexity: segregation, inequalities, peripheries, natural disasters, crime, traffic, waste, pollution and quality of life. It is clear that the figure of the architect, with its role and responsibilities, is the focus, with no chance of mediation or deception. Architecture’s power of synthesis in the face of complex issues is crucial. Although architecture cannot save the planet, it does have major responsibilities towards it.

05:30 PM – 07:00 PM 

Since October, MENA Design Research Center has been developing a research project on the design industry in Lebanon. Moderated by lead researcher on the project, Judith Leijdekkers, the panel discussion will identify results of the research and engage guest experts and the audience in a critical discussion about challenges of the industry and the economy in Lebanon. The discussion will focus on two specific topics: surviving the Lebanese market and collaborating with competition. 

07:00 PM – 08:00 PM 

INTAJ supports sustainable initiatives for economic growth and job creation by funding skills trainings, emerging businesses, and solid waste management & recycling initiatives.

The talk will cover the ways INTAJ can support you, the Artisanal craftsmanship and Current Trends, the Role of Designers in Driving Economic Growth, and Product Design for Waste Management. 

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11:00 AM – 08:30 PM 

12:00 PM - 01:00 PM 

Alonsor’s project, “Aesthetics of the African Diaspora”, is about making a case for investing in African diaspora designers and artisans as a viable and sustainable business model. For too long, activists have worked to secure basic rights for migrant workers in Lebanon to remain as just that: migrant workers. But this ignores the untapped potential in communities that could be contributing to the creative economy and the design industry. We know that a core factor that prevents Lebanese people from investing in African designers and artisans is a culture that supports racism. If we provide the opportunity for Lebanese designers and investors to experience and interact with African designs and designers, this could shift their perceptions of Africans - from low wage workers - to creative beings. Moreover, this shift in perception could be a catalyst that opens doors for existing African diaspora designers based in Lebanon to sustain and grow their businesses.  

The panel discussion will be followed by African themed lunch and a Head Wrapping workshop

03:00 PM - 03:30 PM

Singh Intrachooto is Founder and Head of Scrap Lab as well as tenured professor at Kasetsart University Architecture, Bangkok, Thailand. He is Design Principal at OSISU, Thailand’s leading eco-design venture and holds Doctor of Philosophy degree in Design Technology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His design evolves around sustainable design concepts as his research focuses on identifying patterns of technological innovation in environmentally responsible architecture. Dr. Intrachooto’s investigations also include material developments from manufacturing and agricultural by-products as well as waste reclamation from buildings’ construction and debris. He is considered a pioneer of ecological design in Thailand. Dr. Intrachooto also teaches design at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Washington and gives lectures in Denmark, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and the United States while maintaining his design practice in Thailand with industrial products, art & design exhibitions, residential works, commercial facilities and urban redevelopments. He is Design Innovation Ambassador for Thailand’s National Innovation Agency. 

03:30 PM - 04:00 PM 

Studio Kawakeb sought out strong visual statements in the graphic design and print production of all the communication process of Beirut Design Week 2016. The brief was to create a concept, which visually portrays the theme of the year focusing on sustainability and translating it clearly to the participants, partners and audience of BDW. In this talk, Studio Kawakeb's Christina Skaf, Hussein Nakhal, and David Habchy will explain the process of how they delved into the world of recycled papers and sustainable printing techniques. The main challenges were to use less ink and waste less paper, while having an authentic, simple and captivating approach. 

04:00 PM - 04:30 PM

Ziad Abi Chaker, founder of Cedar Environmental will deliver a lecture on the concept of zero waste society. Zero Waste means designing and managing products and processes to systematically avoid and eliminate the volume and toxicity of waste and materials, conserve and recover all resources, and not burn or bury them. Some people think it is impossible, but Ziad not only believes in it, it is his life-long mission.

04:30 PM - 05:00 PM

The concept of Waste, a Lebanese company that makes accessories and furniture out of recycled advertising banners,  is to design and manufacture sustainably in addition to operating as a responsible business. During this talk, the founders of the company will share their story with the audience.

05:30 PM - 06:15 PM

Sustainability is an important ethical element of the design thinking, but it depends on the possibility to transform the general economic paradigm from linearity to circularity, which is yet to come. As a designer, it is hard to pursue sustainability if your clients does not. In this paradoxical situation, design schools can play a fundamental role for the global diffusion of a new vision of the future, based on design thinking and circular processes rather than on the old, exhausted patterns of the linear economy.

06:15 PM - 07:00 PM

Compositions involve an intrinsic duality between the unitary and the collective in other words, between the condition of being a single entity and, in this sense, autonomous of the elements that compose them and their integration within a larger ensemble. This tension inherent to the relationship between fragment and ensemble can be avoided by eliminating one of the polarities in conflict. It can, on the other hand, be accepted as a necessary condition of the project, thus defining clearly differentiated models with respect to the relationship between the parts and the ensemble. The projects develop internal inconsistencies in its fragments and, at the same time, patiently produces multiple interrelationships between the parts in question. 

RESERVE YOUR SEAT: https://www.ihjoz.com/events/1676