For three days this week, Skolkovo will be transformed into an international centre of industrial design, promise the organisers of an event aimed at helping tech startups to use design as a tool to commercialize their projects.
The idea for the Days of Industrial Design at Skolkovo grew out of a robotics design hackathon. Photo: Sk.ru.
The Days of Industrial Design at Skolkovo event comprises a packed timetable of lectures, master classes, a hackathon and pairing sessions for industrial design experts and startups. It aims to show that design is not just skin-deep.
“Our task is firstly to destroy the stereotype: to show that industrial design isn’t just about making something attractive,” said Elena Panteleeva, head of Skolkovo’s cultural projects.
“Of course it concerns the packaging, but it’s also about ergonomics, about new materials and research,” she said.
“Our second task is for our startups to invite industrial designers to work with them from the very beginning, because that’s how the most professional and successful results are achieved, when engineers, constructors and designers work together on an idea. That’s common practice in Europe and the West,” said Panteleeva.
The event, which runs from June 29 to July 1, will feature lectures by leading international names in design, including renowned Italian architect and designer Mario Bellini, who for decades was chief design consultant for the iconic Olivetti typewriters.
“Mario Bellini is coming to Russia for the first time, he’s a living legend,” said Panteleeva. “Boris Berlin [of Copenhagen’s Iskos-Berlin design team] is another star of industrial design,” and will lecture on June 30 on new materials and technologies.
Italian architect and designer Mario Bellini will take part in the event. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
The idea for the Days of Industrial Design at Skolkovo grew out of a design hackathon held a year ago as part of the annual Skolkovo Robotics event, Panteleeva said.
“Albert Yefimov [head of Skolkovo’s Robocentre] identified the problem. He said: Our robots are talented from a technical point of view, but they look awful,” Panteleeva recalled.
Skolkovo’s culture centre teamed up with partners from Moscow design institutes to hold the robotics hackathon, in which startups worked intensively on the design of their projects with help and feedback from design experts.
“The difference between what they had and what they ended up with was so amazing that we realised that this is a service that is really in demand,” said Panteleeva.
The plan is now to make the Days of Industrial Design at Skolkovo an annual event, and eventually have an industrial design centre located at Skolkovo that would become part of the range of services for startups offered by the innovations city.
The three-day event will also feature a hackathon, in which six startups at various stages of development and representing the foundation’s IT, space, biomed and energy clusters will present their projects.
“Industrial design is the only thing that makes technology made by people suitable for use by people,” said Robocentre head Yefimov.
“All innovators and inventors really should attend the Days of Industrial Design at Skolkovo: it will be easier for us to compete with foreign entrepreneurs if we start beating them not only in terms of technology, but also in terms of design,” he said.
While the event is primarily aimed at startups, all the sessions are open to the public and are free of charge to attend. Simultaneous translation between English and Russian will be available.
“I think the name of Mario Bellini’s lecture will be intriguing for anyone – “Italian Beauty: Life as a Long Journey Through Machines and Objects,” said Panteleeva.
“Gergely [Böszörményi-Nagy, general director of Design Terminal] from Hungary is interesting because his experience is in the post-Soviet space, which is very relevant for us,” she added.
The foreign speakers also include British car designer Steve Mattin, the chief designer of Russian carmaker AvtoVAZ Lada.
“His experience is priceless, because he’s a prominent foreign specialist … who has been able to successfully adapt his designs to Russian conditions,” said Panteleeva.
The Russian speakers include Dmitry Karpov, art director at the British Higher School of Art and Design in Moscow – one of the event’s partners – who will speak at a session devoted to robotics design on July 1.
The event’s conceptual partner is the Moscow Design Museum, a private cultural organization founded several years ago.
Days of Industrial Design will run at the Skolkovo innovation centre’s Hypercube building from June 29 to July 1. A full programme is available here. Attendance is free of charge but participants should register in advance.