The Matter of Identity

Design Talk – The Fourth Day.

On the fourth day of the Furniture Fair 2017, the young designers exhibiting at it had the opportunity to talk to the Jury members who decided about this year’s Golden Key awards. The designers at the beginning of their careers spoke about their projects and ideas and received important advices from the Jury members, Marko Basarovski, a distinguished architect and Creative Director from Belgrade, Matteo Ragni, renowned Italian architect and designer and Max Rommel, Italian photographer and director, which will help them in their further work.

“Such Fairs are important for people to make new contacts. Since several years, I have got the attitude it is not important just to design a product, but also to make connections and be at the right time with the right project at the right place. This is something you will not be taught during your education”, points out Matteo Ragni.

“This Fair is a great opportunity for me to meet new people, designers, companies. This Fair may be the opportunity for design renaissance in this country. I saw many companies from Serbia and the region looking for their identity. I do not know if it exists. My question is – Does Balkan identity exist?”

This question was answered by Marko Basarovski: “I do not think we have got identity within design at the moment. There is no item which can describe the Balkan identity, whether we are talking about design, culture of living style. This is a great problem. We lost this identity long time ago and it is now becoming an increasing problem”.