Stroom School 'Another Reality': Times of complexity and bewilderment: Design no Impasse

Friday 10 June 2016, 14.00-17.00 hrs
Location: Stroom, Hogewal 1-9, The Hague
Language spoken: English
Entrance: free
RSVP: reserveren@stroom.nl

Part of Stroom School, a public program of lectures, tours and events accompanying the exhibition Another Reality. After Lina Bo Bardi.

Zeuler Lima and his guests will talk about the impasses they encounter when trying to give meaning to design in the improvement of everyday life. With a.o. Saskia van Stein (director Bureau Europa), Nina Paim (graphic designer, Basel, Switzerland), Pedro Rivera (Studio X Rio de Janeiro), Mariana Lanari (artist, São Paulo/Amsterdam)

Zeuler Lima (architect, associate professor of history, theory and design at the School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis and author of the biography Lina Bo Bardi) and others speak about the text by by Lina Bo Bardi in which she expressed her concern at the rapid industrialisation of Brazil at the expense of craftmanship and authenticity.

Download the full text by Zeuler Lima as an introduction to this afternoon: Design at an Impasse (pdf).

Excerpt text Zeuler Lima:
One of the recurring subjects in Bo Bardi's writings is her concern with industrial design and the model of industrial modernization embraced by designers and political and cultural institutions in Brazil. She was often apprehensive and fascinated by this subject and cultivated a critical and complex attitude toward it. "Em tempos de grossura: Design no impasse" (In times of roughness: Design at an impasse) is her most articulated view on the challenges of design as a form of cultural practice. The volume published posthumously reads as the presentation of a stalemate in which the conditions no longer existed for an industrial production adjusted to the country's reality and people's everyday needs. The impasse revealed itself in the relationship between industrial design and the model of industrial modernization embraced by Brazilian government and designers, reminding us of continuous challenges imposed by the ever-expanding practice of global capistalism.

The afternoon colloquium "Times of complexity and bewilderment: Design no Impasse" proposes to offer a parallel debate to the current exhibition 'Another Reality. After Lina Bo Bardi' at Stroom Den Haag. It proposes to reframe, update, and expand the cultural debate presented in Bo Bardi's critical design-thinking approach. This is an invitation to a group of architects, designers, artists, curators, and scholars to consider the ‘impasses' regarding material culture that they face in their fields. The idea is not to revolve those impasse situations or to provide clear-cut answers. The idea is try to understand the different) "impasse(s)" by articulating new questions from different points of view and departing from Lina Bo Bardi's critical thinking.

Friday 10 Jun '16 14.00-17.00 hrs
Stroom Den Haag, Hogewal 1-9, The Hague
Entrance: free