Little more than two months to go before What Design Can Do 2014 will turn the city of Amsterdam yellow again. David Kester will be hosting this time and Italian architect Carlo Ratti has also confirmed his participation. WDCD director Richard van der Laken gives an update.
‘Every year since we started in 2011 What Design Can Do has been growing little by little. This year will be no exception. We’ve launched our blog, added a one-week film festival around the conference, teamed up with Antalis for a new design prize soon to be announced, we’ve added new partners and we have a professional social media team installed. We are really leaping forward this year.’
WDCD co-founder and director Richard van der Laken is pleased with the preparations for the 4th edition so far. ‘I’m very happy that we found David Kester prepared to act as a moderator this time. He is the former head of the British Design Council and gave a great talk last year at WDCD. He loved the conference and upon invitation immediately agreed to act as moderator.’
The list of speakers is reaching completion too. ‘We just got confirmation from the Italian architect Carlo Ratti, director of MIT Senseable City Lab, a research group that explores the influence of new technologies on the shape of cities. We’ll also hear from Belgian food scientist and innovator Bernard Lahousse, and spatial designer Teddy Cruz who did amazing work in the Tijuana/San Diego border-zone. With MoMA’s design curator Paola Antonelli, Pentagram’s Michael Bierut, French experience designer Nelly Ben Hayoun and Chineasy-inventor ShaoLan Hsueh and many more, we have a fantastic line-up. Again.’
In the week preceding the conference, a What Design Can Do Film Festival will be held in De Balie. ‘We experimented with this last year,’ Van der Laken explains. ‘This year from 1 till 8 May we offer a public programme of films that fit in the context of WDCD. The idea behind this is to give the general public an opportunity to get acquainted with What Design Can Do.’
With several large design agencies backing the conference and new foreign media partnerships underway, Van der Laken is quite happy with the proceedings. ‘There is still an awful lot to do,’ he says, ‘but my feeling is this event will be awesome. I would say to everyone: take advantage of the Early Bird discount, valid until the 1st of March.’
The official kick-off for WDCD’s 4th edition will take place at Droog Design in Amsterdam on Friday 7 March.