Resident-friendly cities, decent housing for refugees, neighbourhood gardens, technical workshops for one and all, a loom for business start-ups, a solar kiosk, and a mobile sleeper car for the homeless: More and more people around the world are getting involved privately or professionally in such projects because they want to make a difference. The ideas come from all parts of society. Especially in times of upheaval, designers, architects, tradespeople, artists, and engineers have always played a vital role in the search for new ways to take greater responsibility in matters of design. People today are demonstrating their commitment to creating a better world by using design as a tool for sustainable social action. The design of urban spaces, buildings, and traffic routes, as well as products and processes, always reflects prevailing political and social conditions. Designers therefore play a key part in developing new social systems and living and working environments that take into account the broader global picture. In the exhibition "Social Design", the MK&G is focusing on this area of activity for designers, presenting potential solutions, projects that are already running successfully, and creative processes from the field of Social Design. On view are twenty-five international projects and a series of selected local projects in the areas of urban space and landscape, housing/ education/ work, production, migration, networks, and the environment.

Social Design relies on transparent design processes involving a multitude of agents. Even before changes become visible in the social space, the Social Design process has already commenced with exchanges between stakeholders as equal partners and the joint development of ideas and solution strategies. An essential goal of this co-creation approach is to get people actively involved in the project and empower them to act as self-directed agents so they can carry on the design activities independently. In this process, the designers see themselves as partners who put their knowledge at the disposal of the participants while keeping watch over the design qualities and sustainability of the project.

MK&G, an institution for which design issues are fundamental, will within the framework of the exhibition reach out for the first time into civil society to set its own Social Design impulses. For this purpose, the museum has initiated the temporary neighbourhood project "ARGE unmittelbare Nachbarschaft" (Working Group for the Immediate Neighbourhood), whose ongoing work will be illustrated in the exhibition. Another exhibition module will show selected Social Design initiatives in Hamburg on an online city map. Visitors to the exhibition will have the opportunity to propose further projects to add to the map.

The exhibition is accompanied by a supporting programme with guided tours by participating designers and initiatives; tours of Social Design initiatives in Hamburg such as a bicycle island tour and a picnic in Park Fiction; and a children's tour of the exhibition for visitors aged 8 and older during which children can write down, draw, or paint their own ideas.

"Social Design" is an exhibition organized for the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich by its curator Angeli Sachs. The exhibition in Hamburg was supported by the Ernst August Bester Foundation, the Hans Brökel Foundation for Science and Culture and the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S.. The show has been adapted in collaboration with the Studio Experimentelles Design of the Hochschule für bildende Kunst Hamburg.