Attending and presenting at the Seminar were Mr. Le Xuan Kieu – Director of the Center for Temple of Literature Cultural and Scientific Activities; Designer Vu Thao – Founder and Artistic Director of Kilomet109, member of Vietnam Design Week’s Jury; Designer Dinh Cong Dat; Dr. Lu Thi Thanh Le – Lecturer in Vietnam Studies, Vietnam Japan University, Co-founder of the Vietnam Cultural Initiative Alliance with young scientists, researchers and designers.
The seminar was held in person at the Temple of Literature and online on the Vietnam Design Week fanpage.
At the seminar with the theme “Awakening Tradition”, designer Vu Thao shared about the issue of “Responsible Design” with the assertion: Design needs to take on additional responsibilities such as cultural diversity, preservation, maintaining traditional handicrafts, and stabilizing local economies and livelihoods. The responsibility of design is increasingly being pushed up, this positive transition directly affects the nature of the innovation process and the structure of creative and crafting communities. It has a very social cohesion, responsible design practice can attract young designers, engineers, entrepreneurs, businesses and policymakers to create other different products through future systematic products, services and solutions.
With the orientation to bring the Temple of Literature relic into a creative space, Mr. Le Xuan Kieu – Director of the Center for Temple of Literature Cultural and Scientific Activities shared, the Temple of Literature relic is space extremely familiar to many people, however, with such a familiar space, the values of the monument are not always clearly felt and expressed. As a green, ancient, peaceful and quiet space in the heart of a busy city, besides the internal space, the Temple of Literature relic also includes the Van lake area being renovated to become a cultural space with many activities organized to awaken the “sleeping” values of this space. The interior area with Giam garden and Van lake will become a potential space for creative activities, along with religious values. As one of the places where many cultural activities take place, it regularly welcomes many high-level diplomatic delegations and a large number of domestic and foreign tourists, therefore, the innovation needs of visitors are increasingly higher. Faced with that reality, according to Mr. Le Xuan Kieu, the Center needs stronger innovations with four key orientations. Firstly, the Temple of Literature must become the center of cultural activities with regular and periodic activities. Secondly, the Temple of Literature will apply new technologies to convey the values of the heritage to the public. Thirdly, promoting the connection between relics and organizations and individuals in preserving and promoting the value of relics. And finally, Temple of Literature is oriented to become a creative space with 3 aspects: Space for organizing creative activities; Space for displaying creative products; Space for inspiring creativity. “And to make the Temple of Literature relic become a creative space in a sustainable way, it requires the cooperation and companionship of many subjects to open up new directions” – Mr. Le Xuan Kieu desire.
The Temple of Literature becomes a space to inspire creativity (work at the “ Temple of Literature Sketching Contest”).
At the seminar, scientists and professional units also suggested many issues related to the topic of awakening tradition in contemporary life, such as approaching traditional values of young designers; the application and use of technology in design; cooperation relationship between subjects involved in designing creative products and dialogue between experienced designers and young designers, etc. to promote creativity based on cultural heritage.
Binh Duong