GEO-DESIGN: Alibaba. From here to your home - By Design Academy Eindhoven for Dutch Design Week 2018

On the occasion of Dutch Design Week 2018, and within the framework of its ongoing collaboration with Van Abbemuseum, Design Academy Eindhoven presents the first prototype of a new design research initiative titled GEO-DESIGN. GEO-DESIGN approaches design from an investigative perspective, proposing a new format of research into the social, economic, geographical and geopolitical forces shaping the work of designers today. It traces the global flows of production and consumption, scanning online news portals, voices from global productive markets, stories from different geographies, interpreting them as starting points for design researches to be developed remotely or in the field.

The first episode of GEO-DESIGN seeks to trace the nebulous outlines of a company called Alibaba, possibly best known as the world’s largest virtual shopping mall. In reality Alibaba is more than just a “company”: it is at once an online platform, a chat system, a financial institution, a social network, a cloud service, a wallet, an innovation center, an educational provider, an e-commerce giant, and an almost indescribably vast logistics network that links cities, ports and factory villages across the world. Whether we recognize it or not, it is an inescapable influence on every stage of the design process today.