“We decided to experiment with the design and implementation of an initiative born from the idea of students, alumni, and young designers.”
Debates, meetings, exhibitions, music, and workshops to affirm the values that underpin and shape the degree programs in Design at the University of the Republic of San Marino: thinking, building, and acting together, as a community. This, in short, is the philosophy of the "Forma aperta" workshop-festival, scheduled for Friday, June 19th and Saturday, June 20th, in the university spaces of the Ancient Monastery of Santa Chiara, in the historic center of San Marino, including the Aula Magna and gardens.
"After several years of research into participatory and open processes, we decided to experiment with the design and implementation of an initiative born from the idea of the students, alumni, and young designers gathered in the collectives Swag Marino and Collettivo 739, who share our desire to place knowledge at the center of a shared and productive circle," explains Riccardo Varini, director of the three-year degree program in Design. "The historic space of the monastery will be characterized as a living space, accessible and open to the public, bridging disciplines, experiences, and perspectives between the local and the global, between the University and the region."
"For this occasion," adds Massimo Brignoni, director of the master's degree program in Interaction & Experience Design, "our university campus will become an observatory on the world, an open, open, and playfully contaminating organism in which to foster listening, exchange, experiences, and knowledge. It will be the first edition of a festival with its own identity and a lasting vocation."
The initiative is sponsored by the Secretariat of State for Education and Culture, the Department of Architecture of Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna, Cluster Create Emilia-Romagna and the Italian Association of Visual Communication Design, together with the Association for Industrial Design – Emilia-Romagna Delegation, the Italian Association of Design Historians and the International Study Center Design HandMade In.
The festival-workshop will host, among other things, the closing celebration of "D/VENTI," a series of initiatives celebrating twenty years of the University of San Marino's Design degree program. The program will run from 14:30 PM until the evening on Friday and from 9:30 AM to 13 PM on Saturday. Admission is free.