Partners since 2018, Vitra and La Becque | Artist Residency invite you to participate in the first two-day KISS THE FUTURE session, taking place at La Becque in La Tour-de-Peilz (Switzerland) on Monday August 21 and Tuesday 22, 2023.

2023 marks the 30th anniversary of Vitra’s “Citizen Office” concept, a pioneer in anticipating information society era workers and workplaces. The anniversary is less a cause for celebration than a prompt to radically re-think work environments in light of fast-changing architectural-technological and socio-economic factors.

We would like you to join a small group of cross-generational and transdisciplinary participants intent on contributing to a general “future literacy” conducive to a more aware design outlook.

We are pooling Vitra and La Becque’s greatest minds to convene among our friends and partners, makers, futurists and forward thinkers who share a deep sense of place combined with remote work practices and ethics, design specialists will cross ideas with artists in order to bring about a shift of perspective, a reconsideration of modes of presence and of representation, and a dismantling of prejudice as it finds its way into even the most cutting-edge digital construction tools.

This two-day session will focus on a small series of core overlapping thematic clusters central to future-facing workplace design. These will intersect with a set of crucial socio-economic perspectives that need to be considered when envisioning a globally equitable work world.

We will focus on topics such as:

->  Extended realities: virtualization of work, workspaces and manufacturing processes, influence of digital construction tools on physical designs.

-> New cooperativism: finding participation and prosperity in digital work models.

-> Sustainability leadership: from bioregional manufacturing to algorithmic simulation of natural material growth.

-> Machine Minds: incorporating algorithmic learning systems with human decision-making without reproducing or reinforcing discriminative biases).

-> Human needs: making the employee’s needs central to new work environments.

-> City as a service: can the increased functionalization of cities into service poles be done in a more equitable and sustainable way?

Participants will gather at La Becque for two days on August 21 and 22, 2023. They will have access to the entire site and infrastructure at La Becque, from indoor meeting and making spaces to one of the most beguiling outdoor scenery Lake Geneva has to offer.

Accommodation will be provided on site at La Becque in La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland. Travel arrangements will be made for you by the team at La Becque.

Please let us know until Wednesday, July 4 if you would like to take part in this initiative and join us on site at La Becque. Once you are signed up, we will provide you with preparatory food for thought on this pages in the coming days.

Thank you!

Tina, Heiko and Raphael at Vitra

Manon and Luc at La Becque