Distributed Design Awards, 2021 edition

Sustainable design plays an important role in our lives, leading to responsible choices. The many European initiatives currently under way include the Distributed Design platform, co-financed by the European Union’s Creative Europe programme with the goal of supporting and connecting creative artists, designers, makers and innovators to participate in creation of a new model of production and consumption. Distributed Design imagines a world in which "bits travel globally, while atoms stay local".
Coordinated by Fab Lab Barcelona, the initiative includes 17 organisations, members of 13 countries in Europe, including the Danish Design Centre, Innovation Centre Iceland and Polifactory as well as Politecnico di Milano. The platform was created in response to the climate crisis, a global contingency that has raised questions about the nature and culture of the products we buy. Distributed Design seeks a response through research and development of alternatives to mass production, concentrating specifically on movement of data and use of local supply chains. In short, the platform encourages the birth of an alternative production movement based on new models, such as the maker movement, offering consumers greater control over products and allowing them to have a say in the entire production process. Distributed Design Platform acts as an exchange and networking hub serving Europe’s maker movement with the goal of developing and promoting connections between designers, makers and the market.
This year, the platform promotes the fourth edition of the Distributed Design Awards, a call for innovative sustainable projects all over Europe. Participation is restricted to projects created in Europe by designers based in any European Union country. Candidacies are open to anyone working in the creative disciplines centring around Design and Making: creative artists, makers, designer, artists, architects, scientists, students and others. The projects, which will be presented in an Open Call, must reflect at least two of the four basic principles underlining the distributed design model: distributable, reproducible, valuable, and design-sensitive. The initiative’s sponsors include IDEO U, SPACE10, The Index Project and Craftbot, among others. 
Last year’s competition attracted 170 entries, while this year a special category has been created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and future emergencies, entitled Design in Emergency.
In this regard, Kate Armstrong, head of the Distributed Design Platform project, comments: ”The Distributed Design Award attracts designers who are looking to expand the design discipline beyond aesthetics by embracing the potential of design to contribute to a more just, equal, democratic world.” 
We’re curious to see the entries submitted in 2021, including design of products and services in a great variety of sectors ranging from food service to healthcare and from fashion to product design. The categories are Future Thinking, Responsible Design, Adaptable & Open Design, People’s Choice. 
The process of assigning the awards involves three phases to ensure optimisation, consistency and fairness of assessment. More information is available on the competition web site, and registration closes on May 10.

Christiane Bürklein

Distributed Design Awards 2021
Images: see captions
1) Vivihouse DD Award 2019 Winner Find out more: https://distributeddesign.eu/distributed-design-awards-2021/