Manifesto

The Typology Exhibition is founded on the belief that typologies—those recurring forms and functions within design—are not restrictive conventions but generative frameworks. The chair, the lemon squeezer, the kettle: these familiar objects serve not as endpoints, but as points of departure. When liberated from the constraints of commercial expectations, client briefs, and normative feedback structures, such typologies become fertile ground for critical inquiry, material exploration, and formal experimentation.

Yet for many emerging designers and independent practitioners, access to meaningful exhibition opportunities remains elusive. The contemporary design landscape is shaped by competitive, resource-intensive, and institutionally mediated platforms. Participation often hinges on established networks, reputational capital, and an ability to self-fund. As a result, early-career designers are frequently excluded—not for lack of vision, but due to systemic barriers.

The Typology Exhibition offers a counter-model.

We provide a supported, paid opportunity for a wide group selected participants to engage deeply with a given typology. The framework is intentionally open: constrained only by the shared object of investigation, yet free from prescriptive outcomes and industrial restraints. In this space, design is not reduced to function or commodity, but reimagined as a critical, speculative, and expressive practice.

This is not a conventional group exhibition.

It is a platform for experimentation, resistance, exploration, and redefinition. A space where the familiar is rendered unfamiliar, and where form is not merely resolved—but questioned. We take seriously the work of those whose practices are emerging, nontraditional, or situated outside mainstream institutions. With the aim of discussing and developing the discourse of design, form and function.

To participate is not to compete for validation, but to claim the right to explore—without apology, without compromise.

We invite practitioners to engage with design not as a response to demand, but as an act of inquiry.

Not for the market. Not for approval.

But for the exploration and evolution of the discipline itself.