Translations
Schedule
Conversation, Design Practice & Food
The symposium will take place over three-days in Prato, Italy. We will move across the small town, working between the Monash University Prato Centre and the Lottozero textile laboratories.
The Monash Prato Centre is an academic conference and teaching centre located in an 18th-century palace, the Palazzo Vaj, in the historical centre of Prato. Contrasting this traditional setting, Lottozero is an experimental making space based in the vibrant textile centre – an industrial manufacturing zone home to the second largest Chinese population in Europe. A pair of locations that nice represent the tensions of practice research.
Ahead of the Symposium
We will send out a few small activities in the months before the symposium. We will ask participants to share some short reflections responding to some prompts. The answers to these prompts will be distrubuted along with a guest list as a chance to get to know each other ahead of the event.
For those of you arriving over the weekend we will host an informal dinner on the Sunday night. We recommend arriving on Sunday to be ready to commence at 10am Monday.
Monday
September 22nd
Morning
10am - midday.
Via Pugliesi, 26 – 59100 Prato (Italy)
Long Lunch
Introductions continue over food at the Monash Prato Centre
Afternoon
2pm - 6pm
Making tangible through design practice and textile experimentation.
Via Arno 10 — 59100, Prato (Italy)
Dinner
Tuesday
September 23rd
Morning
10am - 2pm.
Making conversational artefacts through assembling textiles, furniture, and
structures.
Via Arno 10 — 59100, Prato (Italy).
Late Lunch
Raviloi | Dumpling
Prato Chinatown
Afternoon
3pm - 6pm
Assembling the context for conversation through placing our artefacts as interventions into the Monash Prato Center courtyard.
Via Pugliesi, 26, 59100 Prato (Italy).
Dinner
Wednesday
September 24th
Morning
10am - 2pm.
Discussion and reflections guided by the practice of previous days and the sharing of case-studies.
Via Pugliesi, 26 – 59100 Prato (Italy)
Long Lunch
Symposium (offically) Concludes
You are welcome to continue the conversation informally at the Monash Prato Centre in the afternoon.
After the Symposium
If you wish to spend some more time in Italy, we will be travelling to Florence on Thursday 25th to visit Poltronova, a manufacturer of Radical Italian Design. On Friday the 26th of September we will head to Venice for the Biennale Architettura 2025, the 19th International Architecture Exhibition (an approximately 3hr trip) and depart Italy from there. Anyone is welcome to join, but will need to make their own travel arrangements.
We look forward to continuing the conversation online, through co-authored publications, future events and other emerging possibilities. We will provide you with documentation and materials to take home from the symposium and send out additional documentation once we have a chance to make sense of everything.