Beatrice Leanza

MAKING FUTURES BEIJING

Contemporary Shifts Across Craft and Design

A Pop-UP Forum in Dashilar

September 27 – 28, 2014; 2 – 8 pm

Location: the MFBJ forum was hosted in an installation dubbed the Fly Tower (or Trapped Tower) designed by Benjamin Beller of BaO Architects, Beijing

Curated bv: Malcolm Ferris, founder and curator Making Futures UK (Playmouth College of Art) and Beatrice Leanza (BJDW)

Organizers: Beijing Design Week, Dashilar Platform and Plymouth College of Art, UK

Program Partner: Stellar Works

Supported by: The Danish Agency for Culture, Coletivo Amor de Madre

The digital craft elements in Making Futures Beijing are aligned with ‘Made@EU’, a two-year collaborative project between Plymouth College of Art (UK); the Institut d’ Architectura Avancada de Catalunya(Spain); and the École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle (France), and supported by the European Union Creative Europe programme

Making Futures: Beijing is conceived as a response to the Dashilar Craft and Design Pilot– the urban plan to promote one of Beijing’s oldest hutong districts as a creative craft and design zone. Complementing a series of collaborations between local craftsmen and contemporary designers established by Beijing Design Week, the project aims to bring Chinese and global perspectives into dialogue concerning the ideas and aspirations that underpin the overall Making Futures series. As such, Making Futures: Beijing will bring into focus research pertinent to the Chinese context and platform it as a contribution to international debate. Each day consists of two thematic ‘sessions’ (four across the two days) each of which is structured around a particular theme:

The Return of Craft?

Will extrapolate from current developments to explore whether we are (or in the near future will) experience a reappearance of small-scale production and consumption based on craft enterprises, design-to-make, and micro-manufacture.

Malcolm Ferris/ Think through Making                

Chiwing Lo/design director, Kanjian Creations: The Wisdom of Traditional Chinese Crafts      

Catherine McMahon (Atlas Studio) /researcher and DSL Craft Pilots series participant: Lightworks              

Jacob Dreyer/researcher, writer: 100 Year Brands               

[Stellar Works/MF BJ program partner]: The Possibility of Evolving 

Material Worlds

Will explore how craftspeople and designer-makers are proactively exploring socially and sustainably engaged projects through re-cycling, renovation and refurbishing and, increasingly, through closed-loop approaches associated with cradle-to-cradle design and make strategies.

Paul Mickelthwaite /course director, MA Sustainable Design –  Kingston University: Make Unmake Remake  – Sustainability and Design          

Pil Bredahl/curator the Danish Craft Collection: Sustainability and the Danish Crafts Collection (CC18)  

Instant Hutong (Stefano Avesani/Marcella Campa) /architecture and design studio (Beijing): RE-USE, Participatory Urbanism         

Danful Yang/designer (Shanghai)  : Exploring Chinese Traditions      

Mauricio Arruda/architect and designer (Sao Paolo): Architecture and Design for Sustainability 

Making Place

Will explore whether and how contemporary approaches to craft and small-scale making can avoid ‘Disneyfication’ and make positive and authentic contributions to community identity, heritage and ‘place-making’.

Andrew Brewerton/Principal, Plymouth College of Art: Plymouth School of Creative Arts – A Case Study in Urban Regeneration        

Zhang Lei (Pinwu studio)  /designer (Hangzhou) and DSL Pilots series participant: Handmade in Hangzhou           

Shikai Tseng (Poetic Lab) /designer (Taiwan): About Ripple and Bronze China Projects            

Kim Charnley /researcher, writer: Urban Space as Vernacular process

Craft 2.0.

Will consider advanced technological models of production, including digital print technologies, from craft and designer-maker perspectives, exploring their current and future potential to support artisanal micro fabrication and designer-makers.

Peter Oakley/Research Leader, Royal College of Art UK: The Future of the Digital and the Hand-made    

Elaine YanLing NG/designer (HK) and and DSL Craft Pilots series participant: CLIMATOLOGY and NATUROLOGY   

Zhang Zhoujie/designer (Shanghai): Digital Lab      

Guto Requena/designer (Sao Paolo): The LOVE PROJECT EXPERIENCE          

Justin Wang/founder Makers Carnival (China) and CEO Makers Space, Beijing:The China Makers Movement           

Areti Markopoulou /architect and professor at IaaC – Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalunia (Barcelona): Personal Manufacturing – Perspectives from the Institute of Advance Architecture of Catalonia

 Making Futures: Beijing represents one of the first attempts to gather China-based perceptions regarding the current and future performance of contemporary craft and designer-maker practices and to place these in dialogue with trans-national debate around these issues. It is intended that that the dialogue started in Dashilar will continue into the future, not least by a strong research strand dedicated to Chinese perspectives in the 2015 UK edition of Making Futures.

Making Futures is a Plymouth College of Art (PCA) research platform developed and curated by Malcolm Ferris. The platform consists of a bi-annual international research conference; a series of satellite exhibitions; an on-line journal that reports the proceedings as an Open Access archive, (ISSN 2042-1664); and a range of related staff and post-graduate student projects. The conference series has evolved across its three editions to date (2009, 2011 and 2013), into the foremost international event in its field, with a good reputation across global art, craft and designer-maker communities.