Bringing design and creativity to the public. This is the main objective of Barcelona Design Week, a week of activities dedicated to showing the importance of design in our lives, but also the overflowing activity of the city’s community of designers who, with their work, imagine a more humane future for all of us. From 16 to 26 October you are welcome to the DHub.

Barcelona Design Week has been organised in the city since 2006, at the initiative of Barcelona Design Centre, an organisation founded in 1973 to give Barcelona design the importance it already had in many other cities on the continent. Today, with more than fifty years of history, the institution continues to be committed to transformations that imply improvements in competitiveness and sustainability.

Design for Human Future is the motto of this year’s edition, which also shows a special concern for the water crisis we are experiencing. From the outset, Barcelona Design Week seeks to promote a more humane and humanistic future through design. This discipline is a very good way to improve quality of life, take care of the environment and contribute to the common wellbeing. 

That is why this year’s edition places the emphasis on the inclusivity of the designs presented, on sustainability and respect for the environment and on social equity. 

One of the most serious problems we are experiencing (and which has motivated one of the exhibitions you can see these days, ‘The ocean speaks’; from 10 October to 23 February) is climate change and, in particular, the problem of water. This edition will be hosted by a capital city in a water emergency situation. How to accelerate the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals that appear in the UN’s 2030 agenda? Perhaps with transformative solutions that use design to improve water management and conservation, and to educate the population about the challenges that lie ahead.

The programme includes proposals that connect with Catalan tradition (‘Terra Rossa’, from 16 October to 6 January), the exhibition of projects from the ‘Water First’ competition at the Palo Alto Foundation in Poblenou, ephemeral installations such as the one presented by architect Benedetta Taglabue at La Roca Gallery, Nutura – Re-experiencing nature and analysis of environmental problems such as those generated by microplastics.

The programme also includes proposals that study the application of artificial intelligence to design, large exhibitions such as ‘100 IKEA objects that we would have liked to have at VINÇON’ (from 17 October to 23 February) and unusual exhibitions such as ‘Underground BDW’, a collective exhibition staged at the Parking Gallery by LCI Barcelona (Àlaba, 124). The last days of Barcelona Design Week, we remind you, coincide with the 48h Open House weekend (26 and 27 October), and one of the unique buildings involved in Barcelona Design Week, La Roca Gallery, is joining in.

There are many more activities open to the public during Barcelona Design Week. If you don’t want to miss them, check out the full programme of this design event on the website.