2024 mcbw design summit

At the heart of munich cre­ative busi­ness week, design sum­mit focused on the claim of this year’s mcbw, How to co-cre­ate with nature.

Rather than roman­ti­ciz­ing nature, design sum­mit was all about tan­gi­ble facts and results because the future of our plan­et con­cerns us all. Design plays a key role in this, as 80% of the envi­ron­men­tal impact of a prod­uct is deter­mined dur­ing the design stage. One over­ar­ch­ing top­ic, almost 20 speak­ers, and numer­ous per­spec­tives and impor­tant insights made for a suc­cess­ful event.

What does that mean in con­crete terms?

There is no ques­tion about it, we are fac­ing great chal­lenges, and the above steps take time. How­ev­er, the spir­its at design sum­mit were opti­mistic and dis­cus­sions con­struc­tive. Promis­ing approach­es and recent devel­op­ments give rise to hope and out­line what is pos­si­ble today.

The Pinecone Prin­ci­ple, or learn­ing from nature

Low­er ener­gy costs in the con­struc­tion sec­tor and reduce trans­porta­tion costs at the same time? This has been promised by Lau­ra Kiesewet­ter and her team at Stuttgart Uni­ver­si­ty with their nature-based prin­ci­ple for the pro­duc­tion of fur­ni­ture and build­ings. Instead of ener­gy-con­sum­ing process­es, the experts rely on the char­ac­ter­is­tics of wood and make use of nat­ur­al humid­i­ty to shape their objects. In Wan­gen im All­gäu, Ger­many, the team has erect­ed a 22-meter-high obser­va­tion tow­er with their tech­nique, prov­ing the capa­bil­i­ty of these self-form­ing processes.

Using meth­ods of spec­u­la­tive design, Daniela Bohlinger (BMW Group) has pio­neered into unchart­ed ter­ri­to­ry and played out poten­tial future sce­nar­ios in which mobil­i­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty go hand in hand with­out harm­ing each oth­er. We are best at design­ing our future if we don’t lose sight of our biggest goals.

Mau­r­izio Mon­talti report­ed on his work on myceli­um, a fun­gus struc­ture that already has been used to pro­duce tex­tiles and pieces of inte­ri­or design – 100% organ­ic and sus­tain­able and, most impor­tant­ly, scal­able to indus­tri­al dimensions.

How can we give nature a say? Tom Kort­beek intro­duced an app that helps visu­al­ize process­es in plants thus offer­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties to make us under­stand nature. The project is based on his con­vic­tion that we will han­dle nature bet­ter if we under­stand more about it.

Green Obses­sions – com­mit­ted to nature

Ital­ian-born archi­tect Ste­fano Boeri was the Cre­ative Explor­er of mcbw 2024. A few years ago, Boeri’s Ver­ti­cal For­est attract­ed a lot of atten­tion: An entire for­est grows from the faVades of the two res­i­den­tial high-ris­es built in Milan, Italy, home to 800 plants, 100 species, and a vast pop­u­la­tion of birds and insects. Boeri cur­rent­ly is con­struct­ing 40 ver­ti­cal forests includ­ing in Switzer­land, Chi­na, and Mex­i­co, prov­ing what is pos­si­ble when you are obsessed with all things green and are coura­geous enough to think out­side the box. His green hous­es that ensure healthy habi­tats for peo­ple, flo­ra, and fau­na are the result of inter­dis­ci­pli­nary coop­er­a­tion. Boeri and his team have cre­at­ed new nich­es for all and have demon­strat­ed yet again that progress and nature do not con­tra­dict each oth­er and can best exist along­side each oth­er when they are thought about together.

Sev­er­al excel­lent approach­es and projects show us how to come clos­er to co-cre­at­ing with nature. It is impor­tant to keep the ball rolling and not lose faith even when process­es are lengthy – there is always grounds for hope. Päivi Tahkokallio from Fin­land, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Bureau of Euro­pean Design Asso­ci­a­tions (BEDA), rec­om­mend­ed spend­ing more time in nature because it takes prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence to make us real­ize the effi­cien­cy of nature and its role as the co-cre­ator that reach­es out to humans.

Acknowl­edg­ment

Our spe­cial thanks for help­ing shape this fan­tas­tic event go to the mem­bers of the mcbw advi­so­ry pan­el Markus Fren­zl, Hol­ger Hampf, Boris Kochan, Ange­li­ka Nollert, and Dewi Schön­beck; to our col­leagues at design cen­ters across Europe includ­ing Päivi Tahkokallio, Christi­na Melander, Tiia Vihand, and Vin­cent van Herk; to Leon­hard Nima for his out­stand­ing mod­er­a­tion of the event; and to our won­der­ful audience.

Read­ing recommendation:

https://www.stefanoboeriarchitetti.net/en/publications/green-obsession/