The intention of the conference series Design Practices is to investigate the borders or rather the subtle relationships that exist between the worlds of architecture, design and landscape today. Fields which continue to be a significant part of the applied arts.

A sequence of conversations and discussions with contemporary actors particularly active in their fields is the expedient to observe and document the practice of contemporary design. Central focus is put hereby on the changes, which are taking place in the way we design, build and produce things, objects, new materials, new methods of communication and especially spaces, which are actually able to enter into a useful relationship with the social as well as with the different contemporary behaviours.

To this end, a series of lectures and conversations is the occasion to meet a selection of young architects, landscape architects, designers, graphic designers and photographers from different countries such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain and beyond. Some meetings take the form of Werkschauen while others consist of a series of conversations on design's current trends centred around the participation of young architects, engineers and designers.

The rural is once again the place of a revolution, of large transformative processes, which forever change the way we live and work together. But what is life like in these decentralised spaces? How do new possibilities and innovations emerge here? What actors are there and how do they act? And last but not least what role do design practices such as architecture play in this field?

In a series of conferences architects, designer, craftsmen, farmer and other practitioners, which are active in these, what we could call “territories of the decentralised”, report from their first hand experience, from what they do and how they do it, from what worked well and what does not work quite so well yet, but already changes the road ahead.

The conference series Unfamiliar Places investigates the multiple relations, which exist today between architecture, contemporary art and other disciplines. Relations that enable todays design culture to create unique experiences, structures and spaces. Some of the most innovative results from the fields of various contemporary inventive practices are presented in order to investigate the phenomenon of contamination that often defines today’s most interesting works: a scenario where architecture encounters visual art, installation art encounters music and vice versa.

A series of conferences and discussions with architects and artists who regularly collaborate with other disciplines, who are active in several creative areas at the same time or who produce works combining inputs from different fields, will provide an opportunity to observe possible parallelisms between different practices. Particular focus is put on disciplines, which engage space and matter.