Dezeen 15 digital festival will present 15 manifestos for the future starting next Monday
Dezeen turns 15 next month and to celebrate, we've commissioned 15 creatives including Es Devlin, Winy Maas and Neri Oxman to propose ideas that could make the world a better place over the next 15 years.
Other contributors include Space Popular, Superflux, Joseph Grima and Jalila Essaidi.
Called Dezeen 15, the festival looks forwards rather than backwards and explore what the world could look like in 2036.
Coinciding with the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow, it aims to showcase how creativity and design can offer bold, imaginative solutions to the world's problems.
"Rather than celebrate what we've already done, we want to look ahead"
Each contributor has prepared a written manifesto and we'll publish one of these each day for the 15-day duration of the festival.
In addition, we'll conduct a live interview with each contributor, in which they'll present their idea and discuss it with Dezeen founder and editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs. Most of the live interviews will take place at 3pm UK time.
All the content will be published on Dezeen's home page and on the special Dezeen 15 section of the site.
"Dezeen turns 15 this year but rather than celebrate what we've already done, we want to look ahead and see what's possible over the next 15 years," said Fairs.
"The world is facing so many challenges but we believe that architects and designers have so much to offer in terms of solutions," he continued.
"So we've selected 15 incredible creatives and ask them to propose an idea that could make the world a better place over the coming decade and a half."
Here is the schedule:
Es Devlin
Monday 1 November
Es Devlin is a British set designer, artist and director best known for creating large-scale performance environments for the likes of Beyoncé, Kanye West and U2.
She was artistic director of this year's London Design Biennale, for which she filled the courtyard of Somerset House with 400 trees.
Winy Maas of MVRDV
Tuesday 2 November
Dutch architect Winy Maas is co-founder and director of Rotterdam studio MVRDV and head of The Why Factory, a research laboratory and think tank he co-founded with the Faculty of Architecture of the Delft University of Technology.
Find out more about Winy Maas ›
Amber Slooten of The Fabricant
Wednesday 3 November
Amber Jae Slooten is the co-founder of the digital fashion house The Fabricant, which she established in 2018 with Kerry Murphy to create clothes that only exist in digital spaces.
She studied at Amsterdam Fashion Institute and became the first-ever fashion student to graduate with an entirely digital collection.
Read more about The Fabricant ›
Kabage Karanja and Stella Mutegi of Cave_bureau
Thursday 4 November
Cave_bureau is a Nairobi-based architecture and research practice. It was founded by architects and "spelunkers" Stella Mutegi and Kabage Karanja in 2014 to lead geological and anthropological investigations into architecture and nature.
It is currently presenting an installation called Obsidian Rain in the dome of the Central Pavilion in the Giardini at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
Read Cave_bureau's opinion column about the Venice Architecture Biennale ›
Yasmeen Lari
Friday 5 November
Yasmeen Lari was the first Pakistani woman to qualify as an architect. Though she closed her practice in 2000, she continues to advocate "barefoot social architecture" and has built thousands of low-cost homes through the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan, a non-profit organisation she cofounded.
Find out more about Yasmeen Lari ›
Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg of Space Popular
Monday 8 November
Space Popular is a multidisciplinary design and research studio founded by architects Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg. The duo has pioneered the development of virtual architecture, designing the world's first virtual-reality architecture conference.
Find out more about Space Popular ›
Francesca Sarti of Arabeschi di Latte
Tuesday 9 November
Interdisciplinary designer Sarti is the founder and creative director of the experimental food design studio Arabeschi di Latte. She established the Italian studio in 2001 to blur the boundaries between design, architecture, art and food.
Her work takes the form of exhibition curation and set design through to interior architecture, art direction and styling.
Find out more about Arabeschi di Latte ›
Beatrice Galilee of The World Around
Wednesday 10 November
Beatrice Galilee is a New York-based critic and curator. She is the founder and executive director of the architecture conference The World Around and author of Radical Architecture of the Future, which was published by Phaidon earlier this year.
Read more about Beatrice Galilee ›
Jalila Essaidi
Thursday 11 November
Jalila Essaïdi is a Dutch artist and inventor based in Eindhoven. She specialises in designing with bio-based materials such as recycled cow dung, which she used to create a fashion collection that explored how to turn waste into valuable products.
She is also the CEO of biotech company Inspidere BV and founder of the BioArt Laboratories arts foundation in Eindhoven that provides entrepreneurs access to a biotech laboratory.
Read more about Jalila Essaïdi ›
Henna Burney of Luma Foundation
Friday 12 November
Henna Burney is a product designer at the design and research laboratory Atelier Luma in Arles, France. Her research involves developing new types of biomaterials and recently developed salt panels for use as cladding inside Frank Gehry's tower for Luma Foundation.
Read more about Atelier Luma ›
Aric Chen of Het Nieuwe Instituut
Monday 15 November
Aric Chen is an architecture and design curator and a professor at the College of Design & Innovation at Tongji University.
In 2018, he was named the first curatorial director of Design Miami. He recently became the general and artistic director of Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam.
Natsai Audrey Chieza of Faber Futures
Tuesday 16 November
Natsai Audrey Chieza is founder and CEO at Faber Futures, a design agency that explores the intersection between design and biotechnology. Her work focuses on biofabrication and examines how natural processes such as microbial action can be harnessed to create sustainable products.
Find out more about Natsai Audrey Chieza ›
Joseph Grima of Space Caviar
Wednesday 17 November
Writer, curator and architect Joseph Grima is the creative director of Design Academy Eindhoven and co-founder of research studio Space Caviar. He recently authored a manifesto calling for a new type of non-extractive architecture.
Before founding the studio, he curated installations for events including the Biennale Interieur in Kortrijk, Chicago Architecture Biennial and the Istanbul Design Biennial.
Read more about Joseph Grima ›
Anab Jain and Jon Ardern of Superflux
Thursday 18 November
London design and film studio Superflux was founded by Anab Jain and Jon Ardern in 2009 to explore technology, politics, culture and the environment. Its work is currently on show at both the Venice Architecture Biennale and the Vienna Biennale.
It was one of the first studios to imagine drones being used in cities for surveillance, traffic control and advertising in a project called Drone Aviary, which was exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Find out more about Superflux ›
Neri Oxman
Friday 19 November
Neri Oxman is an American–Israeli architect and designer known for pioneering the field of Material Ecology. Formerly a tenured professor at MIT, founder and director of The Mediated Matter Group; she now runs her own Lab, called Oxman, in Manhattan.
Find out more about Neri Oxman ›