Design Fest Gent

The end of April will see the start of Design Fest Gent, a new biennial 10 day festival that offers designers space to present their ground-breaking ideas. By focusing on sustainability in all its facets, Design Fest not only wants to inspire the visitors and residents of Ghent but also challenge them and encourage dialogue.

Design Fest Gent demonstrates what design can (and indeed should) be: inquisitive, experimental and activistic. The festival encourages creativity and will become a matchmaker for new collaborations between designers, knowledge institutions, organizations and the industry. These parties join forces because design is so much more than making objects. Moreover, the aim of Design Fest is not merely to present things but also to focus on creation, experience, meeting, stimulation and amazement.

An extensive range of installations, workshops and lectures are bundled in three content clusters: Look Back, Move Forward and Do Care. Look Back shows projects bringing together craft, tradition and new technology. Move forward focuses on hybrid collaborations between science, design and technology with nature as a blueprint. Do Care gathers designs with a social impact.

In the spaces of Design Museum Gent, the projects are divided according to a vertical axis with the concepts Mining, Growing and Flowing. This axis runs through all the museum's floors. On -1 the theme is Mining, in which designers look for alternatives for our increasingly scarce raw materials, such as sand, stone and metals. On the ground floor and at +1, Growing is the central theme. These projects show materials that grow, fauna and flora. How we deal with them and what mindset is needed to take care of them. Flowing, on the second floor, brings together projects that focus on immaterial aspects such as energy, air, sound, smell, happiness, well-being.

Program & tickets

Partners

Artevelde University of Applied Sciences, Flanders DC (Flanders District of Creativity), Museum of Industry Ghent, KASK (School of Arts HOGENT – Howest KASK & Conservatory), KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture, LUCA School of Arts, Ministry of Makers (Designplatform Gent Oost-Vlaanderen), Ghent University