‘This has been an awesome day,’ Giovana Ramos concludes on Twitter after Day 1 of What Design Can Do São Paulo has come to an end. Brazil has embraced WDCD with enthusiasm and cheers of appreciation and joy.
‘This conference is not about any discipline. WDCD is about an attitude it’s about making something happen. It’s about having the “do mentality”,’ WDCD’s co-founder and director Richard van der Laken told the audience in the fully packed FAAP Theatre at the start of WDCD’s first edition outside the Netherlands.
And indeed, this first day combined presentations by journalists Tracy Metz and Mariana Santos, Brazilian’s most respected chef Alex Atala, Norwegian olfactory artist Sissel Tolaas, Dutch data visualisation studio Catalogtree, eating designers Marije Vogelzang from the Netherlands and Brazilian interior and product designer Marcelo Rosenbaum. And on top of that, during the breakout sessions, an exclusive interview with international superstar designer Stefan Sagmeister!
Water is a design issue
American-Dutch journalist Tracy Metz immediately grasped the audience with her opening talk about the need to redesign our cities’ relationships with water. ‘Water is a political issue. It’s also a great design issue,’ she showed the audience.
Moments later Dagan Cohen presented the What Design Can Do Challenge, a brand new and life changing competition proposed in together with IKEA Foundation and supported by UNHCR Innovation, challenging designers around the globe to come up with solutions that can improve the lives of the millions of refugees that seek to survive in cities. Read more about this seriously budgeted challenge meant to make real differences in our separate story.
Food
Brazilian top chef Alex Atala opened the audience’s eyes for the impact the choice of food can make not only for the ones who eat it. Elaborating on his preference for the indigenous produce from the Amazon, he stated: ‘Food should be good for the person eating it, but also for the one who produced it.’
Later on the day Dutch eating designer Marije Vogelzang made a moving and poetic presentation on her work as a designer of eating experiences that are meant to bring people closer to each other. “Designers were making everything for human beings; but food – the very thing you need to live – was not considered a subject,’ she explained her initial interest in food as a subject for design when she attended Design Academy Eindhoven.
And then we didn’t mention yet the powerful presentations by Portuguese media entrepreneur Mariana Santos – with and impressing feathered headdress – and Marcelo Rosenbaum who showed how design can help diminish differences between people.
What a day, so aptly hosted by the irreplaceable Adriana Couto and David Kester.
‘Happy to be part of a design event of such importance,’ Ludmila Costa Arquitetura exclaimed on Twitter. We say: ‘Happy to have you, Ludmila!’