A graphic including layered images of London landmarks with heritage sites across the world.

London Design Biennale 2023 | Talks

Join the conversation at London Design Biennale. Hear more about the installations and the ideas that made them in a series of talks by some of the world’s leading designers, curators and academics.

Talk tickets cost £5 (£2 if purchased in conjunction with a London Design Biennale ticket). 

Talk tickets do not include admission to the Biennale. Talks start promptly in The Screening Room at the scheduled time please arrive five minutes before the talk starts to avoid disappointment. 

WED 21 JUN

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF BIENNALES
13.00 – 14.00

With the current socio-economic and environmental climate, what is the future of Biennales? 

This discussion will look at how cross-sector collaboration can overcome challenges of temporary events, bringing together speakers including the director and artistic director of LDB23.

Can Biennales positively impact both the create and non-creative industries? How can these events and design-led thinking foster new local, national and global collaboration strategies in order to tackle our most pressing issues?

Panellists 

Victoria Broackes, Director, London Design Biennale 
Sevra Davis, Director for Architecture Design Fashion, British Council

Moderator

Aric Chen, General and Artistic Director, Nieuwe Instituut

BEAUTY AND BEYOND: ART AND DESIGN AS AGENTS OF TRANSFORMATION
17.00 – 18.00
Please note this is a free event

The perception of beauty provides the backdrop to our everyday life, guiding and coding our emotions and enhancing the quality of our shared experiences.

The constant flux and innovation of aesthetics has become a fundamental dynamic in our society, driving change and transformation. The New European Bauhaus explores these transformational qualities of aesthetics to tackle current societal and ecological challenges, and discuss the roles, expertise and resources that the arts and design have to offer. How can the New European Bauhaus foster creative acts and artistic ways to relate to the world? How can we contest the affirmative notion of beauty? How can we enhance beauty agency and beauty literacy? How can we turn beauty into a public good?

Panellists

Prof. Dr. Elisa Poli, Head of the NABA Research Programme
Dr. Jens Badura, Zurich University of the Arts, Zurich Centre for Creative Economies
Prof. Dr. Florian Hadler, Berlin Career College, University of the Arts UdK Berlin
Moderated by Aric Chen, Artistic Director, Nieuwe Instituut, London Design Biennale.

THU 22 JUN

INSIDE THE ARTIST’S BRAIN WITH BEATIE WOLFE’S imPRINTING
15.00 – 16.00

Culture editor Rob Bound will be in conversation with art rebel Beatie Wolfe about her LDB installation ‘imPRINTING’.

The pioneering project takes you inside the artist’s brain via a unique sonic self-portrait and ‘thinking cap’ to explore its many channels of collaborations, conversations, music, memory, dreams and fears.  

Panellists

Beatie Wolfe, Artist
Rob Bound, Senior Correspondent at Monocle Magazine

CREATING SPACES OF CALM IN TIMES OF DISPLACEMENT
18.00 – 19.00

How can architects design both for humanity and the environment? When it comes to urban planning, political buildings and structures need emotional sensitivity.

How can architects design both for humanity and the environment? When it comes to urban planning, political buildings and structures need emotional sensitivity.

Focusing on Snøhetta’s latest collaborative project for the French asylum courts, National Court of Asylum and the Administrative Court of Montreuil, this conversation will look at how design and architecture can effectively offer places of calm during turmoil. What do collaborations between administrative courts, engineers and architects look like? How can goals be aligned to benefit the city and the people in it?

Panellists

Dr Romola Sanyal, Associate Professor of Urban Geography, LSE
Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, Co-founder, Snøhetta