Designblok festival opens in Prague today, focusing on future design

Prague, Oct 17 (CTK) – The 21st Designblok international design festival in Prague featuring the works of 348 designers, brands, studios and art schools and focusing on the design of the future opened to the public today, its director Jana Zielinski has told reporters.

The main venue of the five day-festival, which ends on Monday, is again the Výstaviště exhibition grounds in Prague-Holešovice.

In harmony with this year’s focus of the festival, the motives of sustainable production and technologies and material experiments dominate the installations.

Along with traditional exhibitions and accompanying programmes, the event offers two conferences and trips to design in the regions, the organisers say in a press release.

The main foreign guests to Designblok are British designer Jay Osgerby from the Barber&Osgerby studio, who will introduce the Czech premiere of the SoftWork modular system of Vitra brand, and Danish designer Johannes Torpe to present a new collection of furniture for Moroso brand. It includes an armchair and a sofa whose parts resemble a broken heart.

Both designers will also give public lectures.

“Considerations about the future will accompany the whole Designblok as its leitmotif this year,” Zielinski said.

The festival wants to ask questions whether design can contribute to tackling the climate crisis and build a barrier to the exorbitant consumption, she added.

Czech designer Lucie Koldova has created the structure of the main display of the Designeria showroom situated in the central hall of the Industrial Palace at Vystaviste. It will show a space module, a view of the future of work, robots, a maze and designers’ inventions that help in the Third World countries.

hol/dr/pvr