WDC Lille Metropole 2020
Mobilizing its community of designers, citizens, entrepreneurs, researchers and artists, WDC Lille Metropole 2020 demonstrated the power of design to build a more collaborative, creative and responsible future, in Lille and beyond. Under the theme Design is Capital, the city leveraged its rich history and cultural diversity to explore and implement a variety of human-centered design projects.
While World Design Capital 2020 has officially come to an end, Lille’s design story will continue to build on this legacy. Lille’s talented and ever-growing design community is eager to ensure the foundations of the WDC programme continues to drive the region’s development and to inspire other cities around the world to use design to create more collaborative, responsible, creative and sustainable cities.
POCs
“It is from the direct experience of the development of a POC that so many people have approached the culture of design. This was a mission of acculturation in both senses: that of those who develop the project, and that of those who will become the end users.” – Caroline Naphegyi, WDC 2020 Programme Director
Understood as “the moment when we test the prototype of a solution using a design process to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of a product, service or experience”, the POCs (Proof of Concept) were a defining part of the WDC 2020 programme. Having launched a national call for design-led initiatives, the city ultimately identified more than 600 “POCs” that addressed a variety of local and global challenges.
Framed as a way to understand needs, image answers, experiment with ideas and deploy solutions, the POCs focused on various themes, including urban planning, housing, education, culture and ecological and social development. WDC 2020 stakeholders worked to establish the ideas and projects that would define each POC, eventually selecting designers to lead each one. The POC design teams then worked in collaboration with regional municipalities to develop relevant activities and content for each Maison POC, in accordance with the theme.