Romanian Design Week will take place May 12-21, 2023 under the theme CONNECTIONS

Romanian Design Week, a project of The Institute and UniCredit Bank, has chosen its theme for the 2023 edition, which will take place May 12-21. The theme is CONNECTIONS, in an attempt to generate spaces for dialogue and to encourage interdisciplinary and collaborative projects.

Over the last 10 years, Romanian Design Week has become one of the most complex events dedicated to the creative and cultural industries in Romania. The 2023 edition aims to identify and analyze the processes that generate innovation and truly remarkable projects, to create the necessary contexts to encourage and promote them, revolving around the concerns related to creative communities and their role in the development of cities, with a focus on multi-disciplinarity, collaboration, and dialogue.

Thus, the festival will propose the largest program of satellite events ever, developed this time around neighborhoods and historical areas in Bucharest, as well as a series of related events in Bucharest’s public spaces and in other cities throughout the country.

A series of new formats will be developed, in collaboration with other organizations concerned with the development of local creative industries, with the aim of encouraging collaboration, but also the consumption of Romanian design.

Under this theme, edition #11 also brings back the call exhibition format to the festival program, addressed to all local architects and designers, who in the last two years have realized projects they are proud of and believe deserve to be shared with the general public. They can apply in the categories of Architecture, Interior Design, Fashion, Graphic Design, Illustration, and Product Design by completing the entry form available here until November 25, 2022.

The format’s relaunch comes with a set of structural changes that aim to increase the relevance of the exhibition for representatives of the local creative industries.

CONNECTIONS is based on the premise that in a changing world, where networks are becoming increasingly complex, population density is growing, communication channels are constantly changing, and the challenges of expression are continuously diversifying, concerns about how we connect with each other are becoming increasingly important, and design is becoming an increasingly valuable tool to address and/or solve them.

The theme of the edition will thus be reflected in the architecture of the festival and in the concerns and concepts of the new formats developed this year, which will focus on: connections between various local creative industries, synergies between cultural operators, creative communities and their role in the cities they come from, as well as connecting the general public with local architecture and design projects.