ZAGREB, May 14, 2018 – The third edition of the interdisciplinary, multimedia open-air festival dedicated to design, architecture, art and other creative industry-driven branches – Design District Zagreb – will be held on June 14-17 in Zagreb’s “Martićeva zone”.
The festival covers the district of Lower City, spreading on Draškovićeva, Šubićeva, Vlaška, Zvonimirova and Martićeva streets, with Martićeva Street playing the central role. Within the district, the organisers have recognised an exceptional potential for the development of cultural and tourist products and services in the local context owing to favourable urban infrastructure and the tradition of modern urban culture that has been continuously sustaining itself in its contemporary variant.
The programme includes exhibitions (both indoor and outdoor, within public and private premises, inside of galleries and abandoned and unused facilities), discussions and lectures (with guest lecturers from Croatia and abroad pertaining to the fields of design, architecture, urbanism and others), workshops (focusing on various fields of interest in design and creativity, both for children and adults), spatial interventions and installations (taking place in parks, on the streets and unused shops and shop windows in collaboration with partners and sponsors of the festival as well as municipal institutions), various events (promotions, panel discussions, screenings, public readings, etc.), open doors days (when visitors have the opportunity to visit and get a direct insight into design and architect studios within the district) alongside with the rich music and gastronomic programme.
The programme of Design District Zagreb 2018 is a combination of very specific understandings of what design might be and the way it can progressively impact complex and multi-layered social relations within a selected and representative urban community.
Long-term objective of the Design District Zagreb project is to develop into a broad, inclusive and participatory platform for gathering and creating networks of cultural professionals active in the district, people living there and those visiting it so to achieve a more simplified and creative communication with the overall urban community as well and national and international one, and to propose and organise projects of strategic interest for the district and the City of Zagreb— starting from the Festival and beyond.
One of the objectives is also to affirm the understanding of design as a methodological and reflexive field providing tools for analytical research and creative planning applicable to different spheres of living. Urban development with all its specificities is certainly one of those tools. This way of understanding design brings us closer to the definition of “social design”, i.e. design that makes a composing element of thinking and organising interpersonal relationships within a particular social community.
Long-term objectives of the project imply continuity in content production as well as the continuation of development and growth of already established collaborations, programmes and communication channels, together with further strengthening of partnership relations with municipal institutions, sponsors and participants of the Festival. Also, the Festival strives to permanently maintain some of the contents developed in the district during the Festival and make them an additional value in the public space of the City of Zagreb.
