UTOPIA IS POSSIBLE. ICSID. EIVISSA, 1971. #2
Designing a new type of congress; projecting a new city model
Research: Teresa Grandas. Interviews: Teresa Grandas and Daniel Giralt-Miracle. Design and editing: Teresa Grandas, Dolores Acebal and Lucrecia Dalt
This three-part miniseries looks back at the 7th Congress of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) and pieces together an ensemble narrative based on the testimonies of some of its protagonists.
Forty-one years after the Congress in Eivissa, designers, architects, artists, philosophers and other professionals from the cultural field come together again to reconstruct and analyse the spirit of that adventure. The interviews that are reproduced here were originally recorded on video and are part of the exhaustive research behind the exhibition ‘Utopia is Possible. ICSID. Eivissa, 1971’.
In this second episode, we explore the causes that led a group of young professionals to re-imagine a new type of congress, one that would encourage interaction among participants and at the same time draw international attention to the design that was coming out of Catalonia.
The location chosen was the island of Eivissa, an oasis of permissiveness and cosmopolitanism in the midst of the censorship and repression imposed by Franco’s regime. In order to house the students who would attend, the organisers designed an ephemeral, inflatable ‘plastic city’ that was constructed communally by the congress delegates. The ‘Instant City’ became a socialization experience and the true emblem of the congress.
related episodes
The collapse of manners
Culture, Counterculture, Design. The path to freedom
"UTOPIA IS POSSIBLE. ICSID. EIVISSA, 1971" is a three-part miniseries based on the research carried out for the exhibition of the same name. It brings together the testimonies of some of the participants who took part in the 7th Congress of the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID), in an ensemble portrait of this collective experience.
Bartomeu Marí, Daniel Giralt-Miracle and Teresa Grandas talk about the research processes and the execution of the "Utopia is possible. ICSID. EIVISSA, 1971" exhibition.