Beyond Borders: Can design heal the rift between global and local?

Beyond Borders: Can design heal the rift between global and local?

Amrita Mahindroo, Jean-Michel Geridan, Stella Mutegi and Kabage Karanja (Cave Bureau) and Samta Nadeem

By Global Design Forum

Date and time

Thu, 12 Jun 2025 16:30 - 17:30 GMT+1

Location

King's College London

Strand London WC2R 2LS United Kingdom

About this event

  • Event lasts 1 hour

Amid tensions between globalisation and nationalism, there's an urgent need to foster common solutions to collective problems – so we bring together designers who are exploring new forms of belonging and collaboration through design. Stella Mutegi and Kabage Karanja of Nairobi-based architecture practice Cave Bureau, tell us how they disrupted national boundaries at the exhibition they co-curated for this year’s British pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Jean-Michel Geridan, director of Le Signe, the National Centre for Graphic Design in France, explores the role of visual communication in creating shared meaning and identity. And Amrita Mahindroo, co-founder of London-based Da Costa Mahindroo Architects, which works on projects around the world that are contributing to the construction of national identity, explains how she sees design as an instrument of soft diplomacy. The talk will be chaired by Samta Nadeem, curatorial director of the global media house and curatorial agency STIR, our digital media partner.

Location: The Great Hall, King's College, London

This edition of the Global Design Forum is supported by our Digital Media Partner, STIR.

Should you have any access requirements, please contact us at rsvp@globaldesignforum.com to accommodate your visit.

Tags

Organised by

Global Design Forum

As part of the London Design Biennale programme, from 10 - 12 June 2025 the Global Design Forum will host a series of talks and panel discussions at King's College London, under the title ‘Design and the Invisible’.

How can we dismantle outdated systems and forge radical new ones? Join Samuel Ross, Mariana Mazzucato, Kengo Kuma and dozens more of the world’s most exciting designers and thinkers for a series of talks that will rethink the hidden powers shaping our world.

Beneath every object, building and space lies an entangled network of invisible forces – financial flows, digital networks, contested borders and unspoken cultural codes that shape lives and govern the world.

Inspired by artistic director Samuel Ross’ Biennale theme, Surface Reflections, we pull back the curtain on these unseen drivers of design. Over three days, leading designers, architects, economists, activists and technologists will shine a light on the impulses that come from within us, those that lie outside us and those that connect us, and envisage a future where design’s transformative power is freed from invisible constraints.

This edition is supported by our Digital Media Partner, STIR.

FreeJun 12 · 16:30 GMT+1