The Municipality of Covilhã, in compliance with UNESCO’s Creative City Action Plan, will promote the first edition of the International Design Triennial, between March 21 and June 21, 2025.
This initiative is organised and produced by Ideias Emergentes, a cooperative in the field of culture, based in Porto. Taking a bioregional approach to design as a situated practice, the Covilhã International Design Triennial will take place in various venues in the city and aims to foster a design culture in the region, reinforcing its natural and social territory as a space for innovation. For the first edition of the Covilhã Design Triennial, and aligned with the Triennial’s approach to bioregional design and situated knowledge, we invite all Cities of Design to take part in a renewed approach to the World Wide Things Collection, an exhibition project first developed by Anne Thomas (Montréal), Pierre Laramée (Montréal) and Eberhard Schrempf (Graz) in 2017 to collect and exhibit notable designs from the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.
We, therefore, call on the different representatives of each City of Design to propose products, services or projects that reflect a preoccupation with the social and environmental sustainability of their region, care for the originality, complexity and integrity of both its natural territory and populations, as well as an acknowledgement of the role history, ancestrality and tradition play in the design of innovative artefacts that adequately reflect contemporary uses and concerns. We are particularly interested in artefacts that result from collective, interdisciplinary design processes, especially those developed collaboratively between researchers and creative professionals. These may be commercial products or services by public entities or private firms, and experimental initiatives that aim less at problem-solving than agenda-setting.
Proposals submitted for World Wide Things Collection 2.0 will be discussed and selected in articulation with the Covilhã Design Triennial’s curatorial team, to better define each project’s alignment with the Triennial’s curatorial statement, presentation requirements and logistical details.
PROJECT SPECIFICATION: Each creative city should submit no more than two project proposals that fit in Covilhã Design Triennial’s bioregional approach to design as a situated practice. The exhibition maintains the original premise of The World Wide Things Collection, namely the characteristics and the limited space of the exhibition venue.
Thus, the proposals must be adequate for a collective exhibition with space conditions that are contingent to the dimensions of the received projects. As constituent parts of each exhibited project we consider physical artefacts as well as audiovisual contents (printed or video). These parts also include a 150-word caption that interpret the project’s goals and context.
ROLE OF THE TRIENNIAL: The Covilhã Design Triennial guarantees the exhibition assembly of the projects and their integrity, correct handling, security and conditioning.
ROLE OF THE INVITED CREATIVE CITIES: Each creative city is responsible for shipping the exhibits and covering transportation, customs clearance and insurance costs, including returning. It is also responsible for providing the digital files of contents set to be reproduced locally, in print or on screen.
PROPOSALS: The proposal must be sent in a file containing a conceptual text about the project and its adequacy in the Triennial goals, a biography of the authors, a technical file and images. DEADLINES: Proposals for the International Design Triennial must be submitted by December 15th, 2024. The Triennial will give feedback on the proposals by the end of 2024. They must be received in Covilhã by February 28 at the latest.
DEADLINES: December 15th, 2024. The Triennial will give feedback on the proposals by the end of 2024.
C O N T A C T
Cidade Criativa
cidade.criativa@cm-covilha.pt
F U R T H E R I N F O R M A T I O N
click here