Introduction

Dear Visitor,

Budapest Design Week festival has reached its eighth anniversary. Its development is undiminished just like the loyalty of our audience and partners. It is indeed a Hungarian success story. Present all around Budapest at over a hundred locations Design Week is of national importance as in the first ten days of October we celebrate the Hungarian creative industry with a series of programs and also with all the work that goes with it.

We have had seven beautiful years spent in a fever – sometimes in nerve fever – for continuous development and improvement. As the curator of Design Week in the past four years I have to call the attention to something that for most people might only be some data seen in the impressum, yet for us has been the earnest of our existence. Right from the beginning two institutions have been supporting us: our sponsor, the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office (former Hungarian Patent Office) and our patron, the Hungarian Design Council. The eight years of continuous existence have been possible thanks (also) to their professional decision and undiminished support. Without them there would be no Design Week.

The 2011 festival is dedicated to self-reflexion. COULEUR LOCALE, meaning local colours, local shades. By choosing this slogan we tried to explore whether national character, visual DNA existed in design culture. The most important aim of Design Week is to call the attention to the country's creative industry, to the unique characteristics of its visual culture, to its design values. Local tones and colours following from our special Central European position and existence, values piquing the attention of a globalising world. What is our cultural DNA like? What is our idiopathy, what is the colour we are adding to the entirety of visual and design culture? Many designers think that cultural and geographical background, history, local colours and traditions are the sources of inspiration authenticating their creative activities. Visual and design culture is just as inalienable as mother tongue. And it is true for every nation. The most important increment of globalisation can be that ideally it functions as a mirror that helps behold and recognise our own face.

Budapest Design Week festival helps this international dialogue not only with its opening exhibition displaying objects from some 30 countries, but also by inviting Poland, our guest of honour this year. Being in the centre of international attention, Polish design is present at the festival in the form of objects, exhibitions, fashion and jewellery shows, presentations, while, naturally, some of the leading actors of the Polish design scene also participate at Budapest Design Week.

Another novelty this year is that we have widened the range of our by now traditionally organised programs (Design Tours, Design Week Discount, Open Studios) with the launch of Design Week Gastro. To present food design we approached five important actors of the Hungarian gastronomic “boom” to cooperate with us and create exclusive products for the festival.

So Budapest Design Week is for all senses now.

I hope that this year we can again serve our audience hungry for design with intellectual nutrition enough for an entire year!

Rita Mária Halasi
curator
Budapest Design Week