Action for Age

Commissioner of Action for Age, the role of design in the context of the challenges and opportunities presented by an ageing population.

Action for Age explored the role of design in the context of some of the complex challenges and opportunities presented by an ageing population.

Through a partnership between the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts in the United Kingdom, and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and experimentadesign in Portugal, this creative laboratory invited university and design students to work under the coordination of senior designers. The common challenge was to create services, networks and other intuitive solutions centred on the user for the effective bettering of the lives of the elderly.

The results of the workshops were presented in a showcase and conference integrated into EXD’09 by Guta Moura Guedes, Isabel Mota and Emily Campbell.

In Action for Age, design represents a reconditioning discipline for our experiential context – material, spatial, communicative and of interaction – establishing a harmonious relationship with the new necessities and demands of a society that is in constant transformation.