World Design Capital 2014
The bi-annual award is bestowed by the Icsid to cities dedicated to using design for their social, economic and cultural development. A World Design Capital designation gives a winning city global focus during a year-long programme of design-led events, and Cape Town is bidding for the 2014 opportunity. Previous winners have included Torino, Italy (2008), and Seoul, South Korea (this year’s title-holder) while Helsinki, Finland will be World Design Capital in 2012.
With Cape Town’s theme being ‘Live Design. Transform Life’, the City of Cape Town has mandated the Cape Town Partnership to coordinate the City’s bid, and already a vital network of partners from local and provincial government, creative industry organisations and institutions, the media and leaders in local design have come together to lend support for the initiative. Other cities currently in the running for the 2014 title are reportedly Bilbao, Dublin and a number of Chinese cities.
Says Lorelle Bell, the Cape Town Partnership’s bid coordinator: “Cape Town may not have Bilbao’s design assets or Dublin’s locale, or for that matter China’s financial resources, but what we do have as a City is a strong story to tell 20 years post-democracy of how design is being used to undo how the City was historically designed to divide people. Icsid is understood to be looking for a City from a developing country.”
The theme of the bid will broadly be connection and reconnection and focus on the way Cape Town has been using design to reconnect people through projects such as the IRT, the public spaces programme, the dark fibre network, research and design being conducted at educational institutions, and even how our calendar of major public events draws on the talents of designers, their networks and design programmes to incorporate as wide a citizen base as possible. It will also look at public architecture, as well as art and memorialisation, in terms of their contribution to place-making. The bid allows the City, for example, to leverage the gains made during the 2010 FIFA World Cup which demonstrated the positive impact of people-centred design.
Cape Town will also use the bid process to promote City design assets and designers, and use this process to put design and the City’s design-led projects in the public domain, so that people generally can begin to understand the impact design can have on City development, how important designers are, and how critical design education is to the City if we are to create strategic-thinkers and innovative design entrepreneurs for the future.
Adds Bell: “We have a thriving design community – from our internationally awarded and recognised industrial designers, to our architects and even our animation industry. This is an ideal opportunity for all creative industries to showcase our talent to the world, and achieve important recognition for design among our own communities in terms of educational transformation and development.”
The first step in the bidding process is the preparation of a bid book to specific guidelines laid out by the Icsid, and to be submitted by the end of March.
Says Bell: “We are therefore calling for all those involved in design, in whatever way, to look at submitting their projects and programmes for consideration for the bid book. We are also asking all those in the creative industries to lend support to the bid by displaying the ‘I support World Design Capital 2014’ logo on their own property – from websites and blogs to promotional material.”
