Intramuros 213: design, the challenge of living spaces

In this uncertain summer, when the heaviness of the heat waves and the fires took precedence over our dreams of a summer break, an optimistic breeze persisted, if we took the time to notice. Indeed, from the Salone Satellite to the playgrounds of the Copenhagen Design Week, from the exhibitions of the Saint-Etienne Biennial to the Design Parade Festival, not to mention the numerous diploma projects unveiled, young design was busy asserting itself with freshness.

Creative, fantastically resilient, young design proposes a real renewal of the way we see design, with a strong awareness of current issues, climate and society. Eminently curious, it reinterprets our fundamental needs, our rituals, to reformulate more inclusive needs and uses. It opens up new fields with imagination, thinks about production in cycles, recycling, and research into materials. And from objects to space, reinvests a dialogue rich in avenues to explore, today and now, in line with our pressing needs and our aspirations to live differently, and always better.

A real exciting challenge ! For, between adaptation and innovation, it is a question of designing our spaces to reflect the changes in our lifestyles. Nomadic, hybrid, connected, so many adjectives are used today to describe the interactions with which we live on a daily basis, exacerbated or perhaps more visible, more conscious, in recent years.

Our strength lies in our ability to “deal with”, to adapt. This has been evident for decades in a desire to work on the notion of multi- function, that a piece of furniture can combine multiple uses. Then appeared clearer solutions in the form of systems, modular sets, until the redistribution of functions in the space of the home, the porosity of rooms, for example the kitchen or the office. Rooms to live in, cars to live in, nomadic products, from the object to the space, each project, in order to be relevant, is part of an exchange with its environment at all levels. This is what Richard Woods and Nils-Udo also emphasize in the city and in the vineyard. This is not new, but it’s what this benevolent breeze reminds us, and which more than ever puts design back at the center of the game. “The eye listens” wrote Paul Claudel, and designers sense it and respond.