3100 Designing Critical Design, 2007

Z33 Hasselt

Z33s' 'Designing Critical Design' brings together three designers who have all established an international reputation as a critical designer. Jurgen Bey (Nl), Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby (UK) and MartI Guixé (ES), operate the same attitude towards mainstream product design, working a different angle. Each of the designers distance themselves from the contemporary commercial design world, meanwhile using the same mechanisms to question technological, social and ethical matters. In contrast to conventional product development, their thought processes involve a concern with design strategies and the role of design in a consumer society. With their experimental and hypothetical projects, they offer an alternative vision on technological developments, social processes and the role of design in the contemporary world. This ambivalent, critical position towards design and their form idiom, is the main focus of this exhibition. The brief was to show the existing world, together with a new creation. The exhibition consists of three solo exhibitions, in which each designer presents their newest piece, embedded in a overview of earlier work.