Our participatory tool at the Biennale Internationale Design Saint-ÉtiennE!
2022 is the year of the «Biennale Internationale Design Saint-Étienne», a major cultural event where designers, researchers, intellectuals and art lovers from all over the world come together to question and discuss the practice of design and experiment with its various methods.
The 12th edition of the biennale will be running from the 6th of April to 31st of July under theme of "Bifurcations". Bifurcating means to abandon one direction in order to explore another one. Our lives are a series of bifurcations and through this theme, the biennale wants to highlight innovative, inspiring, creative, collective or individual practices that are developed when the unexpected enters our lives and challenges our habits and living environment.
According Olivier Peyricot, the scientific director of the Bienniale, “with 7 exhibitions and more than 150 events, the Biennial invites a collective reflection on the capacity of design to accompany these changes. Whether it is a critical and forward-looking tool, an inventive method or a cultural phenomenon, design is being debated in Saint-Étienne.”
And guess what? Africa – a continent at the heart of the contemporary ecological and political issues - is the guest of honour of this year’s edition. Inspiring practices from the continent will be the focus of one of the seven exhibitions featuring in the biennale.
For us, this event offers the possibility to highlight one of the strategic tools we use in participatory urban planning: the "Design your own house" game board. This object has become an effective way to collect information in a playful way and to overcome language and/or cultural barriers.
Visitors will also have the chance to have a closer look at our latest publication “Ng’ambo Atlas, Historic Urban Landscape of Zanzibar Town’s ‘Other Side’”.
For more information see the website:
