Belgrade Design Week 2009
The fourth Belgrade Design Week took place from May 26th to 31th, 2009 in the iconic building of former department store KLUZ on 5 floors and over 6000 square meters in the center of the city. The main part of BDW 09 was a three-day international conference “SPEED SQUARED”.
The theme of the conference was SPEED SQUARED – covering the fast pace of our times changing the world, new technologies, faster communication and networking, fast processes of thoughts and production times… BDW was trying to explore the fast changes and developments in every discipline of communication, design, branding, architecture, society and the resulting new way of living. We wanted to understand the effects, and also to evaluate the different consequences of our fast changing world. Belgrade Design Week's wish was to connect the local creative sector and businesspeople with the greatest international creative and business minds, as well as to attract global attention to the creative power of Southeast Europe, our region in particular.
The highly coveted Belgrade Design Grand Prix, provided by vote of the conference delegates, was awarded to the Muuto founder Peter Bonnen.
Believing that design is not only a tool for gaining economic profit and success, but a carefully developed methodology for introducing and finalizing new ideas and visions of a better society, BDW fulfills its mission by enabling the greatest minds of the 21st century to showcase their visions to the world. Among them on BDW conference 2009 were creatives and companies Rabih Hague/ DeTnk, Coop Himmelb/ Wolf D. Prix, Jürgen Mayer H, Peter Bonen/Muuto, Sadar Vuga Arhitekti, Branko Lukic, e-Types, Mario Nanni, Chicco Bestetti, Stylepark, Caravan Cultura, Simon Jacomet/ ZAI SKI, AIRSIDE, Adrian Shaughnessy/Varoom magazine, Tony Chambers/Wallpaper, POKE London, Marcus Fairs/Dezeen, Laura Woodruff/D&AD, Sasa Lakic, Grafik magazine, Francesco Rota, Agape and Normann Copenhagen.
BDW initiated, connected and engaged various spaces and authors to showcase their exhibitions, workshops, panel discussions and presentations at over 50 locations in Belgrade, all under one name “Belgrade Squared”.
“designPark” showed the “Italian Way of Seating” exhibition organized by The Italian Institute for Foreign Trade. It presented 77 ‘Made in Italy’ chairs which had marked the previous century and were awarded with many international prizes. The main goal of the exhibition was to present dominance and influence of the Italian design which had been the leading world design in 2nd half of the 20th century. The curator of the exhibition was architect Alessandro Mendini.
With the slogan 'New Nordic' Muuto presented the best up–and–coming young designers from Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. The designers who were part of the group Muuto - Louise Campbell, Ole Jensen, Jacob Wagner, Pil Bredahl, Julien De Smedt, Thomas Bernstrand, Michael Geertsen, Helle Mardahl -seem to be creating the future icons of Nordic design. Muuto’s products represent the essence of modern Scandinavian design by combining aesthetics and functionality with a new perspective – they are creative, simple, beautiful and useful.
Since its foundation, Normann Copenhagen has garnered a reputation for atypical products from world renonwned designers including Ole Jensen, Rikke Hagen, Karim Rashid and Marcel Wanders. The iconic Norm 69 lamp by Simon Karkov was first presented in 2002. It was among four other products on show at the Obiectum’s “Normann Copenhagen” exhibition at Belgrade Design Week. Normann Copenhagen has won 32 awards for its design, and can be proud of such prestigious accolades as the IF Design Award, Design Plus, Interior Innovation Award Cologne and the Good Design Award. We also displayed two pieces from the Normann Copenhagen furniture range “New Danish Modern”: the Blueclay Bowl and the Play SoapboxCart.
