“Conversations with Lithuanian students, entrepreneurs and creative people I met here, made me see the possibilities. This was a magical experience”, says Lorenzo Piazzi, Head of DesignLibrary, which has central headquarters in Milan. Next year a branch of this unique library will be opened at Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) Santaka Valley. It will be the first European branch outside the central office in Italy.
Although the physical library space will open only next year, DesignLibrrary events schedule at KTU is busy. The first Design Thursday in the beginning of October invited creative thinkers and those interested in design to the discussion on digital production and relationship between design and technology.
On Thursday, 26 November at Santaka Valley the discussion on cooperation spaces will take place.
Could you please explain how DesignLibrary works and what are its main goals?
DesignLibrary is a no profit cultural organisation aimed to develop design culture all around the world, by aggregating members from different countries and letting the community grow through networking between institutions, companies, publishers, students, designers and architects, creative people in general, and also through the Library’s activities such as conferences, exhibitions, and, of course the Library’s services, such as R&D centers in design field.
Everybody can join the network and become a member. The membership is valid 12 months.
Why do you think it is important to create such platforms like Design Library?
I don’t “think” – we believe in this.
The reason is that today’s global scenarios are focused on finding solutions to survive the most complex Era that humanity have ever lived. To do that we are trying to connect people who believe that design could be the conjunction ring between science, art, biology, technology and all the extra-ordinary discoveries that are happening every day, and the-real-life. The human life.
The focus is to create a global community of people who spend their time designing the future, while connecting physically or digitally, sharing their opinions and debating on what could be the best solution for the next transportation revolutionary machine, or medical device, or digital instruments for education in schools all around the world. It means to participate in the only form of innovation that is really possible today.
How would You define the need of Design Library in Lithuania? In Kaunas?
While traveling to Lithuania for the last year, especially Kaunas, I didn’t see “needs”, i.e. understood that people around me really want, or really need. As in the rest of the planet, there are followers and pioneers. This is a social rule, probably biological, which we can see all around us everywhere.
Rather, I can tell you about the opportunities that I saw here. Those were shown to me directly by the students, entrepreneurs and all the people that I met. And this was the most important and the magic thing.
I think that in Lithuania, as in all the world at different levels, there is a sort of unconscious energy and ‘latent creativity’ which needs to be connected to empower itself to grow exponentially.
This is what we are trying to do opening new branches of DesignLibrary in different places on the globe: to aggregate creative, local community, to empower themselves to be unique, not following the standards. At the end of this process, we are trying to export this local knowledge to other countries and to understand how design culture could provide innovation, participating, and improve our daily life.
What made you choose Lithuania for your next branch?
It was vice versa: Lithuania chose me first. Then – after just one year and a half – I convinced myself that it was a very good intuition. You know, as it always happen: wonderful things need more time than the others, to become true.
How would you name the perks of relationship between Italy and Lithuania?
Geographically speaking, amazing. DesignLibrary Kaunas will be established on the border between Western and Eastern cultures, and at the same time it will be the first branch of DesignLibrary in Europe, after the Milan’s headquarter. Kaunas could be in the future the meeting point of design and technology innovation community for all the Baltics and North European EU countries. This is the reason why we agreed for a 6-year-long period of exclusivity for the DesignLibrary brand.
In terms of contents I think that Lithuanian-Italian collaboration will provide very good opportunities to exchange interdisciplinary resources, mainly for companies and institutions, but also for small-medium enterprises, young entrepreneurs and startuppers.
Exchange in design – can you see any patterns for this between Lithuania and Italy?
Definitely, yes. It is already happening, at this moment, when you are reading this text. DesignLibrary’s mission is just to collect these phenomena and to record, catalogue, archive and give them the possibility to became a part of the history of Design. It’s our cultural heritage for the next generations.
People already move from one country to another, choose how and where they would like to spend their life everyday. There are no boundaries to cross today, you need just few euro for a low-cost flight.
The only boundary is cultural differences. Design culture introduction through an integrated and defused program, is the only path that we can follow today, not only between Italy and Lithuania, but also with the other countries.
How would you imagine the future of Design Library Kaunas?
Illuminated.
