Designing your City of Tomorrow with Anna Asikainen, Nina Martin and Francisco Blockstrand from AALTO University, Finland

Beirut and any city is only as vibrant as its citizens. And the same can be said of the services you experience in the city.

How can we design these services in a way that allows citizen participation to shape the Beirut of tomorrow? New technologies now lie in the palm of your hand. As users and designers, how can these technologies make your city more connected and smarter, not just more high-tech?

In this workshop we will look at the intrinsic social network of people and their disciplines in Bourj Hammoud. How are people connected in the life beyond the store fronts? Through design methodologies we will learn from the way the area functions, the artisans interact, the local identity has been shaped and try to translate those insights into services with and for the area and the rest of Beirut. In three days of this service design workshop at Badguer we will go through a full design process to shape potential services towards a connected city. The methodology has arisen from designers at Aalto University in Finland and their partners in South Africa, during a World Design Capital 2014 project.

Come join us to design the Beirut of tomorrow together!