These days Ljubljana, Slovenia’s capital, is a home to the 26th Biennial of Design Ljubljana, BIO 26. The world-wide acclaimed biennial of design has already started in mid-November 2019 and is going to finish in mid-February. This year the Biennial’s theme, Common Knowledge, tackles the information crisis. BIO 26 presents six winning projects selected through the Desginathon in which groups of designers and non-designers took on the challenges pressing on the institutions of knowledge production and knowledge transmission.
»Working with content, structures, and stakeholders, the 26th Biennial of Design in Ljubljana hopes to find ways, unearth projects, and explore concepts and systems that can serve to turn this disruptive chaos in and of information into creative knowledge clusters,« points out the organiser on the BIO’s website and continues, »The notion of ‘common knowledge’ relates and refers to what people know; more broadly, if refers to what people think and how they structure their ideas, feelings, and beliefs. Furthermore, the term ‘common knowledge’ carries a sense of communal or shared knowledge.«
This year BIO takes place in more than twelve different venues of Ljubljana, each one of them unique in character and space. The diverse venues include: Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO), Kresija Gallery, Ajdovščina Underpass, Lek, Goethe-Institut Ljubljana and Slovenian Cinematheque, National and University Library Ljubljana, Ljubljana Botanic Garden, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Faculty of Arts at University of Ljubljana, Anselma, DLUL, Mitnica Gallery, and even the Glass Atrium of the City Hall.
Three months of the acclaimed international Biennial include exhibitions, film projections, guided tours, lectures, and numerous workshops. BIO is organised by the Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO), and is an international platform for new approaches in design. It was founded in 1963, making it the first design biennial in Europe. BIO works as a testing ground, where design is employed as a tool to question and improve our daily life, among different and multidisciplinary design approaches that touch systems, production, services, scientific research, humanistic issues, unexpected conditions for the production of our habitat.
