OK Talk brings together designers, artists and theorists operating in Finland and Britain to talk about emerging questions in design philosophy and strategic design. The series of events started at Helsinki Design Week on September 4.
Making Places. Making Places takes a fresh view on spatial practice. It studies both existing and imaginary places, looking at their creation, evolution and essence. The speakers for the two Making Places talks, one in Helsinki and another one in London, range from architects that build, design systems or make music to researchers and designers who create places through cultural activities or visual identities. Using Helsinki and London as starting points, we will encourage the discussion to revolve freely around placemaking in relation to day and night, the natural and the human-made, infrastructure and spirit of spaces, cities and citizens, or planning and spontaneity.
Strategies of Participation. Strategies of Participation explores the design of encounters, interactions and collaborations. Having used tools and methods such as intuition, friends, different media, travelling, coffee and the paper that you are holding in making OK Talk, we are keen on learning new ways to design participation. The panelists include creative professionals in the fields of interaction design and cultural production specialised in events, online platforms or exhibitions. They are invited to share their skills and insights on creating constructive collisions between people.
Borderlands. Borderlands explores the crossing of boundaries between design, art and other fields with an emphasis on collaborative practices. The idea of this talk is to look at the role of the designer in the increasingly interconnected world where we see the ambiguity of professional identity, often connected with varied locations, people and modes of practice, as an asset. What can working in between disciplines offer for creative professionals and the world at large? How are design processes changing? The speakers will tackle these questions through their backgrounds that vary from architecture and music to critical and experimental design, publishing and curating..