SUMMER NEWS 2020: PART A!

In image above: Upland Creates CryptoKitties Retirement Community…and CryptoFun is just the Beginning of this experience! 

Summer 2020 is somewhat morose, with many countries still under lockdown constraints in business and travel. Nevertheless, A4D-D4A is short-listing traditionally this time of the year, some interesting ventures to know about, regarding design , technology, society and everything in between. There you go: 

- Today the developers of the blockchain-based property trading game and virtual parallel world Upland announced to its community that it has created “an island retirement resort for all your hardworking CryptoKitties” just off the coast of San Francisco on Angel Island. In a nod to blockchain pioneer Dapper Labs and its highly successful digital cat collecting & breeding game, Upland is running a week-long event, ending at 7 AM PDT on June 30th, where CryptoKitties players can send some of their many beloved but less fruitful cats to Upland’s in-game island retirement community where they will “be immortalized in our platform, enjoying the beaches, sipping milk-based cocktails, laying around in the sun and enjoying all the fish they can eat”. 

In exchange, participants get a chance to win up to 75,000 UPX, Upland’s in-game currency. The more CryptoKitties retired the higher the participant’s ranking, which will be tracked via a leaderboard. And, of course, they are encouraged to join Upland where they can visit their retired cats on the Angel Island retirement community any time.  
The Upland platform is a virtual layer mapped to real-world addresses and offers players true ownership of digital property that they can buy, trade, and sell on the Upland open marketplace. 

Launched as an open beta with properties in San Francisco early this year, future iterations of Upland will expand to include other cities and regions throughout the world, the possibility to erect structures on properties, and will enable developers to build and run businesses on the platform. Upland also plans to allow the use of digital assets created outside of Upland, and the CryptoKitties event is a sneak peek at this upcoming feature. 

To join the Upland mobile web open beta, go to https://discover.upland.me/web or download either the free iOS or Android app. To learn more, please visit  https://upland.me/. The company’s mission is to create fun experiences and new opportunities for everyone at the intersection of the real and virtual worlds. Upland launched its open beta in January, 2020, and has since steadily climbed the charts of blockchain applications. The new open beta version can be joined at https://upland.me/.

- Blockchain streamlines waste management: the Bee2WasteCrypto platform will allow quantification, characterization of production and optimization of technologies to be used in waste management, according to the environmental and service objectives of each management entity, using blockchain technology. Revolution is just around the corner, not to say inside your garbage bin.

- Pedrali Synergies? Hopefully-yes. Robin Rizzini + Sebastian Herkner are the 2 big names of European Design engaged by the Italian- mega house. (Post)Covid19 utilitarian aesthetics will have a scent of two opposites poles made in IT/UK and DE. Very anticipated collections by both of them, we are so looking forward to the Pedrali booth at Salone del Mobile 2021. 

- Again™ carpet: the Dutch DSM - Niaga manufacturer or upcycled and recycled materials is working miracles with its carpets and floor furnishings production for indoor office spaces. Conscious home objects of desire and geared towards office use for the time being,  Again™ is made of recycled materials and can be recycled into a new carpet after use. It meets commercial carpet's highest quality standards and contributes to healthier working environments.

- Great, wearable, contemporary jewelry has a new platform to showcase and retail. Welcome to atelierallday.com, where you can find fine, creative jewelry by independent designers and makers. Shana Gulati’s studio and her 18K resin and diamond earrings, just among our very favourites. 

- The Geomag Mechanics 86 Magnetic Motion Set allows children to build incredible and exciting inventions by stimulating their creativity, inventiveness and intelligence through mastering mechanics & engineering, allowing them also an introduction to science. Ideal for children aged 7+. Download the Geomagworld app on iOS and Android stores or check out the web version, with interactive instructions for all product lines and many alternative ideas to create and share your new construction projects!

That’s all for now. Until our next post, scheduled for mid July on the Good Design Awards - stay safe and stay united. 

#WeStandTogether   #BlackLivesMatterToo 

A4D-D4A💙💚🙏

Towards the XXIII International Exhibition of Triennale Milano,“The Earth seen from the Moon”: A New (Design) Intelligence Rising.

In screenshot above: so close and so far away, behind masks and social distancing  the speakers based in Italy attend by videoconference straight from Cambridge, USA, the amazing intervention of Matthew Claudel, designer, researcher, writer in  MIT Urban Planning department. 

The second symposium towards the XXIII International Exhibition of Triennale Milano, entitled: “The Earth seen from the Moon”, just took place. The symposium is part of a three-appointment series that address some key issues of our present. The discussion, taking place at a delicate moment when many countries are approaching the reopening after the health emergency, started  from the analysis of some key issues, ranging from “Stand apart to understand A New Anthropocene”, from “Fragility as awareness” to “The legacy of the pandemic” and the idea of “A new culture for a new world”. 

The idea of not being the center of the universe, therefore decentralizing our selves and our egos from that position towards a new courage, a new determination, a new state of mind and eventually a new design – is pronounced as the headline of the convention by Stefano Boeri President of the Triennale. Our planet is the only thing we have and as the spark in the universe we are, we cannot possibly imagine that we matter, but we can definitely claim we did come this far. The 51st anniversary of the Man landing in the Moon marks that very moment of consciousness, gazing at our blue and lively planet, realizing the actual size of our importance in the vastness of the universe. At the same time the pandemic is not the only issue tantalizing the world: the upheaval against colonial social techniques and the need of new tools to repair injustices such “anti-black”, “anti- indigenous”, “anti-South” become entirely prominent also as the antidote to new “genocides”. 

Can Design understand current pivotal issues and actively contribute to them? Exhibitions are the mirrors of our times  and they will become through innovation and tech the platforms of joint action in front of the many challenges and the need of new social regeneration. The power of creativity is super important in these times of environmental and political crisis, also demonstrating the fragility of cultural institutions, therefore our proper personal weakness, emphasizing our need to adjust in this Era of the Unexpected in Fast-track Mode.  

“The Museum will be re-designed to function as a Laboratory from now on: a place of dialogue, not a place of unearthed, previous findings, not a Commodity of Archives”. 

Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries, London. 

In a time where Computational Capitalistic Ideology also seem to prevail finding through Simulation a solid ground for gigantic profits, the area of the City, the Urban Scheme cannot continue to be a resource trap. The ecological transition through a new set of design rules is a Project now- a project that politicians are rather late to follow and react accordingly.  

In screenshot bellow: The Eco-Century Project outline presented by Panos Mantziaras, Director, Fondation Braillard Architectes, Geneva, Switzerland- an initiative launched at the Braillard Architects Foundation.  

The emergency of the situations occurring, dictates a New Model of Alternative Governance designed to cultivate attachments between different actors and ecosystems.  We must rediscover how to live together and how to put all these provisions  to use in the near or distant future. The necessity of decentralized micro-economies/units is essential to a new Life model designed not only for temporary survival but to immune us against our perpetual cultural and economic cannibalism.  

In screen shot bellow, a slide from the Matthew Claudel presentation, designer, researcher, writer, MIT Urban Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA.  

The crisis of governance triggers the imperative implementation of design systems in every public sector and in every field in general. The power of design in Covid-19 times will endure the difficulty of the current circumstances, by providing solutions for a New lifestyle. There is no U-Turn.

  

Bellow: The Canadian TheSiteMagazine issue Provisions-Observing & Archiving Covid-19, illustrates contributing theoreticians' and designers' visions about a new material culture, mentioned by Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of Architecture & Design, Director of Research & Development, MoMA and Curator of the unprecedented Triennale Exhibition Broken Nature in 2019,(check relevant A4D-D4A Post here). 

Speakers at the symposium: Stefano Boeri, President, Triennale Milano; Dimitri Kerkentzes, Secretary General, Bureau International des Expositions, Paris; Maryan Ismail, Anthropologist, voice keeper of the Somali community in Milan; Ersilia Vaudo Scarpetta, Astrophysicist and Chief Diversity Officer, ESA European Space Agency, Paris; Giovanna Melandri, President, MAXXI, Rome; Hanru Hou, Artistic Director, MAXXI, Rome; Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, Director MAXXI, Rome; Grazia Quaroni, Director of Collections, Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris; Kandis Williams, Artist, director and publisher, Los Angeles; Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine Galleries, London; Bernd Scherer, Director, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Panos Mantziaras, Director, Fondation Braillard Architectes, Geneve; Matthew Claudel, Designer, researcher, writer, MIT Urban Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; Paola Antonelli, Senior Curator of Architecture & Design, Director of Research & Development, The Museum of Modern Art and Curator of the Trienalle Exhibition Broken Nature in 2019, New York; Li Xiangning, Professor, Tongji University, Shanghai; Ben Ware, Co-Director of the Centre for Philosophy and Visutal Arts (CPVA), King's College, London; Joni Baboci, General Director of Planning and Urban Development, City of Tirana; Giovanni Fosti, President, Fondazione Cariplo, Milan; Marina Ponti, Global Director - UN SDG Action Campaign, Bonn; Nico Daswani, Head of Arts and Culture, World Economic Forum, Cologny; Emanuele Coccia, Associate Professor, Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales, Paris; Joseph Grima, Director of Museo del Design Italiano of Triennale Milano; Torkwase Dyson, artist from Chicago who lives in Harlem. 

Visit the Triennale here. 

#westandtogether  #blacklivesmatter #indesignwetrust  @triennalemilano 

A4D-D4A💙💚🙌