International Symposium Social Design – Public Action
Social design strives to structure and shape society and the environment through human activity. The international and interdisciplinary symposium Social Design – Public Action now looks into the topical subject of social design values in the creation of space in the public realm.
The symposium addresses social design as an integral element of communal and transcultural interaction within the urban environment, being shared among all individuals. Social Design - Public Action challenges the cross-examination of our built environment on an international level. It attempts to
interweave the discourse into the very fabric of society. It aims at connecting artistic research and the abstract and theoretic sciences with hands-on practice of spatial and cultural production.
United in an overall attentiveness towards the observation of complex contexts relating to effect and action in space and a thorough understanding and appreciation of the transformational power of architecture over time, Social Design – Public Action brings together internationally-renowned speakers from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds offering an inspiring bandwidth of perspectives on the subject of social design in contemporary political discourse and creative processes.
Pinpointing novel and pro-active approaches that draw their conceptual strength from the understanding and envisioning of the combination of multidisciplinary design strategies and their consequences in the built environment, the symposium addresses the numerous,
current adaptive systems of social and political, as well as ecological and economic challenges and responsibilities we are facing today. Against this backdrop social design is questioned as a means to facilitate the vital formation and transformation of the whole urban network beyond traditional urbanist-architectural and political conventions.

Speaker are: Alfredo Brillembourg, Beatrice Galilee, Anil Kumar Gupta,Jeanne van Heeswijk,Marisa Mazria Katz, Hubert Klumpner, Jeroen Koolhaas, Steve Lambert, Thomas Lomée, Constanza Macras, Leonidas Martin, Emeka Okereke, Veronika Orso, Oliver Percovich, Saskia Sassen, Tatjana Schneider, Iorn Sorvin

A special issue if SlumLab magazine is published for the occasion.