Geo Design

As first investigation into Alibaba online and offline worlds the exhibition composed of 9 different observation angle was successful in bringing into the Museum rooms topics, characters, ideas, trading routes, new geographies which not necessary are included into the contemporary design conversations. The exhibition brought together angles of interested in the field of technology, labor forces, diplomatic agreements and new forms of markets shaping the design migration from east to west and vice versa. The exhibition was made through an observation of the digital and real world and design became the tool to express to a large public what the designers learned during the field researches. The public by entering in the museum's room was transported into parallel realities which are happening far away geographically or hidden in the codes of e-commerce platforms. The public was enthusiast to discover new perspective in what design can look at and how to approach the complex world of e-commerce Alibaba through the discipline of design. The public knowing Alibaba mostly from purchasing online product could discover the immensity and the variety of meaning through which the platform influence our every day. The museum rooms became vibrant of new energies coming from the project. The exhibition was an understanding of a relevant emerging economy happening online and revealing the everyday changes which are more or less far from Europe. The public could learn, enjoy and go back home with new perspective of what geography and labor in design means today.

Alibaba. From here to your home is a door into the e-commerce world of the Alibaba Group and the research design paradigms coexisting within it. As the first Chinese platform to connect consumers directly with manufacturers, Alibaba and its multiple online marketplaces allow any scale or type of local business to join the global online market. Over time, it has developed an intricate structure, which controls a range of services including banking, cloud storage, AI applications, chat rooms and educational channels. The network that emerges reaches nearly half the world. Today, Alibaba has become an Eastern giant, shaking and slowly re-shuffling the foundations of contemporary geopolitics, adding e-commerce as a key player in this new landscape. The complex global reach and internal structure of this company, calls for us designers to use it as a lens through which to advance the design questions of today that deserve a research approach, which goes beyond the work of one individual. The floor plan of the show follows a circular, interconnected chain of extracted views from alibaba.com and the exhibition unpacks what happens before, during and after Alibaba reaches our homes, in a box or as an online experience. It addresses this theme from nine different angles, explored by nine design studios. Together, they offer one possible portrait of an e-commerce network made up of several smaller players, mirroring how Alibaba works. The designers entered the mechanism of Alibaba.com to think within its framework, understand and penetrate its multi-actor system, and respond creatively to the present. Alibaba. From here to your home is a reading of the encrypted machine, which fuels one of the world’s largest international networks. The exhibition brings unwritten design standards and actors, which have yet to be embedded into a Western vision of design, into the museum space.

On the of occasion of Dutch Design Week 2018, and within the framework of its ongoing collaboration with the Van Abbemuseum, Design Academy Eindhoven presents the first prototype of a new design research initiative entitled GEO—DESIGN. The project approaches design from an investigative point of view, proposing a new research format into the social, economic, geographical and geopolitical forces shaping the work of designers today. It traces global flows of production and consumption, scanning online news portals, voices from global productive markets, stories from different geographies, interpreting them as starting points for design research to be developed remotely or in the field. The first episode of GEO—DESIGN seeks to trace the nebulous outlines of a company called Alibaba, possibly best known as the world’s largest virtual shopping mall. In reality Alibaba is more than just a “company”: it is at once an online platform, a chat system, a financial institution, a social network, a cloud service, a wallet, an innovation center, an educational provider, an e-commerce giant, and an almost indescribably vast logistics network that links cities, ports and factory villages across the world. Whether we recognize it or not, it is an inescapable influence on every stage of the design process today. Nine multidisciplinary design researchers, all DAE graduates, were invited, starting in August 2018, to choose one aspect of interest from the given context and examine it within the framework of contemporary design. Borrowing from journalism, filmmaking, scenography, interaction design and other relevant disciplines, they observed, collected and brought together characters, places and voices into the format of a final exhibition: Alibaba. From here to your home.