Bringing Archives into the Present

A conversation on design, memory, and the systems that shape our present during NYCxDesign.

Archives are not just records of the past. They are the blueprints for the present.

We live in a designed world. The objects, spaces, and systems that shape our lives are not given — they are the product of contingent choices, each one a claim about who the world is for, what it should do, and who gets to decide.

Featuring a new generation of visionary designers, Bringing Archives into the Present, presented as part of Frame in Frame: Swiss Design in Motion at NYCxDesign, examines design as a fundamental technology of civilization: the process by which human intention becomes material, ideas become systems, and values become behavior. Refusing nostalgia, this discussion asks how our world came to look this way, and how design choices, systems, and ideologies that once felt radical have come to seem inevitable. 

The discussion will explore how historical context does not simply inform the present, it constructs it. In doing so, it recognizes the extraordinary responsibility and a rare opportunity given to designers: to see through the assumptions of our current reality, and to shape the path of the future.

The future is not waiting to be discovered — it is being designed right now. 

Frame in Frame

For the first time in the United States, Frame in Frame – Swiss Design in Motion presents rediscovered experimental films produced in Switzerland between the 1960s and 1990s. Shown during NYCxDesign at WSA, the exhibition unfolds within a scenographic framework developed in collaboration with a new generation of designers and artists. Curated by Christian Herren, Frame in Frame is presented by the Consulate General of Switzerland in New York.

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Program

  • 1:30pm – Check-in starts
  • 2:00pm – Opening Remarks by the Consulate General of Switzerland in NY and Swissnex in Boston and New York
  • 2:05pm – Panel Discussion, Q&A
  • 3:15pm – Networking
  • 4:00pm – End

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