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The Papanek Symposium explores critical themes pertinent to issues of contemporary design. Partnered with broader design initiatives, research projects, and academic institutions, the symposium brings together social scientists, designers, historians, digital experts, activists, human scientists and curators.
Past symposia have explored the historical trajectories of design activism, the ethics of algorithms and data, the cultures of émigré design, the political futures of design, and the power of alternative and outlier economies. Speakers have included biotechnology designer Natsai Audrey Chieza (Faber Futures); media theorist Alison Powell (LSE); architectural historian Felicity D. Scott (Columbia); art historian Robin Schuldenfrei (Courtauld); roboticist David Bruemmer (5D robotics); graphic designer Jonathan Barnbrook (Barnbrook London); social innovator Babitha George (Quicksand, Bangalore); artist/technologist Chris Csíkszentmihályi (Cornell); data theorist Orit Halpern (Concordia); Turner Prize winning architect Eyal Weizman (Goldsmiths) and alternative technologist, Vinay Venkatraman.
The Papanek Symposium 2023, Design Anthropology: Critical Speculations, will be co-convened by Alison J. Clarke, Professor of Design History and Theory, University of Applied Arts and Shannon Mattern, Professor of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research, NYC, 16–17 March 2023.
Porto Design Biennale, Portugal
Biblioteca Municipal Almeida Garrett
26–27 September 2019
Design is in crisis: Or, at the very least, in massive transition, exploring and rediscovering its potential during deeply problematic times. Real World: Design, Politics, Future, the 2019 Papanek Symposium, investigates design’s inherent tensions in the context of rising global far-right populism and the asphyxiating manipulation of information in a post-truth era.
Austrian Embassy, 18 Belgrave Square, London, UK
22 September 2017
Questions of design and ethics take on a new currency, form, and prescience in a post-industrial, ‘post-truth’ landscape. The technological shifts that have re-organised work through the automation of labour are intimately connected to global social problems relating to immigration, racial and gender politics. New classifications of intelligence, ‘artificial,’ ‘alternative,’ and ‘false’ are produced and consumed through the design and management of infrastructures of information.
Angewandte Exhibition Centre Heiligenkreuzer Hof, Vienna
27–28 May 2015
This international symposium examines the significance of Austrian and Central European émigré and exile architects/designers in promoting a progressive culture of debate in the United States, around the needs of society and strategies for social inclusion. The culture of the social in design that emerged in America from the 1920s, persisting into the 1960s, was defined by collaboration. The symposium is the first to address the pivotal role played by émigré and exile networks in New York, Boston, Chicago, Aspen, and Los Angeles, in shaping a new social agenda within design.
AULA der Wissenschaften, Vienna
15 November 2013
Design in the 21st century, harnessed by rising powers striving for economic competitiveness and cultural profile on the world stage, has taken on a newly urgent political significance. The unprecedented quantity of production and cultural engagement with design, from China to India, is shaping our collective futures. Can alternative design genres develop on the periphery of established neo-liberal models of economics and consumer culture? What is their potential to generate social innovation and challenge pre-existing, unsustainable economies of production?
Angewandte Exhibition Centre Heiligenkreuzer Hof, Vienna
10–11 November 2011
The inaugural Victor J. Papanek symposium, ‘Anti-Design: A Prescription for Rebellion,’ takes its slogan from Papanek’s clarion call to designers, to look beyond the aesthetics of conventional product design to a broader, politicised vision of design’s power to transform social futures. Invited speakers, from historians to contemporary designers, will present their visions and critical reflections on the potential of design’s anarchic past and future.
