A Flurry of Design Events in Asia and Europe Fill the Autumn Calendar - New York Times

LONDON — What would you do if you were organizing a design festival and, a few months before the opening, one of your two artistic directors was arrested and imprisoned without a release date?

Panic? Postpone the opening? Cancel the whole shebang? Carry on in the hope that he or she would be released in time? The organizers of the Gwangju Design Biennale in South Korea opted for the last course when the Chinese artist and political activist Ai Weiwei was arrested in April. Luckily Mr. Ai, who is joint artistic director of the event with the South Korean architect Seung H-Sang, had finalized the plans for his contribution before his arrest. His collaborators pressed ahead with the project during his three months in prison. After his release in June, Mr. Ai returned to work on the biennale the next day.

Despite the anxiety about Mr. Ai, the Gwangju biennale is scheduled to open Friday as planned. His contribution is an exhibition of "Unnamed Design," on which he has collaborated with the curator Brendan McGetrick to address the timely theme of the changing definition of design. They are planning to explore design's contribution to fields with which it has not traditionally been associated, including the invention of computer viruses and new financial models, and the organization of political protests.

"Unnamed Design" is one of a series of exhibitions commissioned by the Gwangju biennale under its über-theme "design.is.design.is.not.design." Among them is "Communities," which is curated by Beatrice Galilee and features an aquaponic garden, where plants and fish are cultivated in the same water system, developed by the British eco-social design group Something & Son. The biennale will also leave a permanent legacy in Gwangju by constructing 10 "urban follies" designed by Florian Beigel, Nader Tehrani and other international architects in different parts of the city.

Ambitious, intellectually provocative and generously funded, the Gwangju biennale seems set to be one of the most compelling design events of the autumn, but it has plenty of competition. More than a dozen cities are to stage design festivals, biennales, triennales and so on over the next two months.

Among them are Beijing, Brussels, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Lisbon, London, Paris, Prague and Vienna, plus the Polish city of Lodz and Eindhoven in the Netherlands. The Estonian capital Tallinn will host an Innovation Festival on social design starting Sept. 16 to mark its year as the European Capital of Culture. Even Milan, the home of the busiest design event of the year, the Milan Furniture Fair, which is held every April, is to host Milano Design Weekend in early October.

Crazy though it seems to schedule so many design fests at more or less the same time, there is a rational reason for doing so. The organizers are desperate to distance them from the frenzy of the Milan Furniture Fair. Even so, the crush leaves them scrambling to persuade designers and curators to sign up for their programs rather than another city's. One designer told me that he has speaking gigs at six different design weeks in September alone.

Some of the autumn design fests are linked to commercial events. The flurry of design exhibitions in Paris during early September is centered on the Maison & Objet interior design fair. Similarly, the London Design Festival coincides with the 100% Design furniture fair. Among the highlights of the London festival this year are a retrospective of post-modernist design at the Victoria & Albert Museum, a survey of the work of the late graphic designer Alan Fletcher at Kemistry Gallery, and outdoor installations by the architects David Chipperfield and Amanda Levete.

Other design fests model themselves on art biennales, by commissioning programs of exhibitions and debates to interrogate important issues in design, as the Gwangju event intends to do. "Change!" is the theme of Lodz Design 2011. The sixth of the lively EXD design biennales organized by Experimentadesign in Lisbon is entitled "Useless." Its program includes exhibitions on conflicting interpretations of uselessness in design and a treasure trail of personal collections of objects and memorabilia exhibited in different places along the route of the city's famous No. 28 yellow tram.

Copenhagen Design Week has plumped for "Think Human" as its theme in a nod to the world's richest design prize, the €500,000, or $820,000, INDEX: Design to Improve Life Awards, which is to be presented Thursday in Copenhagen. Every two years, INDEX: gives €100,000 to each of five humanitarian and sustainable design projects that enhance the quality of people's lives in different ways. Among the contenders for the 2011 awards are: the High Line park on a disused New York railroad; a Bali school made from bamboo; and an eco-responsible alternative to the shoe box.

The human side of design is also the theme of a new event: the first Beijing International Design Triennial opening Sept. 28. Intended as the highlight of Beijing Design Week, the triennial is to explore the concept of "ren," which roughly translates as caring for other people, and is one of the most important elements in traditional Chinese design.

The triennial has commissioned five exhibitions to analyze different aspects of "ren" in contemporary design at the National Museum of China. One will consider the balance between emotion and reason in design. Another show, curated by the British designers Tony Dunne and Fiona Raby with the Chinese artist Jin Jiangbo, is to look at design's role as a speculative medium to stimulate debate.

Admirably ambitious though the Beijing triennial is, its chances of becoming a credible hub of global design debate will be impeded by the international outrage over the imprisonment of Mr. Ai. The timing does not help. Even before his arrest, Mr. Ai was the most prominent figure in Chinese design outside the country. Thanks to his star billing at the Gwangju biennale, he is now set to return to center stage at one of this autumn's design fests, despite the efforts of the Chinese authorities, which have banned him from attending the opening.