Back in Lisbon, ExperimentaDesign (from 9 September to 8 November) is commemorating its 10th anniversary this year and will be challenging the city with a stimulating and dynamic programme in September. ExperimentaDesign Lisboa 2009 questions the definition and role of time in contemporary design and production, architecture, culture and creativity. In a changing environment, sharpened by a global feeling of crisis, EXD09 will look at the various ways in which notions of time and urgency are connected. The biennale’s programme will address a broad spectrum of time- related issues like speed, slowness, acceleration, improvisation, networking, sharing, and their consequences for design and its social dimensions. EXD09 will look at time as material, as resource and as challenge: time to think, time to collaborate, time to make, time to reflect, time to share.

It’s About Time... How are we thinking about time these days? As a subjective experience or a socially defined concept? As luxury commodity or basic market currency? In a sense, everything in our lives is about time; it is the one resource that no individual or activity can do without. We value time, we save it, we manage it, we fight it. Ultimately, time is never enough, so we are forced to prioritise. Assess, compare, choose, relegate. As contemporary life accelerates non-stop, communication is real-time, decisions are split-second and problem solving relies on quick fixes rather than sustainable solutions. In a world on the brink of environmental and financial collapse, there is a pressing need to take action – but do we think before we act? It’s about time to concentrate on mature reflection and persistent change. ExperimentaDesign proposes to translate the double meaning of its 2009 theme into a programme: to think about the way we use time in design. EXD looks at the various ways in which time plays a role in creative disciplines, and how they in turn can address shifting notions of time and urgency. How can creative practitioners reconcile the ever-increasing speed of life with the need for reflection? Can designers develop a new notion of ‘time-based design’? How do we deal with the social dimensions of time? Social processes are fast becoming a main ingredient in product development, from open-source R&D to community-based production and project implementation. Keywords here are intimately connected to notions of time and urgency: improvisation, networking, sharing and parallel development. It’s all about time.

Images from above: It’s about time. © 2009 Experimentadesign. Photo Marco Reixa; Poster of the exhibition "Quick, Quick, Slow". © Graphic Thought Facility; Stop and think. © 2009 Experimentadesign. Photo Marco Reixa; João Sabino: Bottled spices, salt and pepper containers in the “Timeless” exhibition; Peter Zumthor. Photo Miro Kuzmanovic/miromedia.net images