Budapest Design Week Roundtables: Design as Dialogue

One of the key goals of Budapest Design Week is to show that design speaks not only through exhibitions and objects but also through live conversations. This year’s program features 12 roundtable discussions, creating space for the exchange of ideas where professionals and the public can jointly seek answers to questions about the future.

A total of 10 Budapest-based and 2 regional roundtables will welcome audiences between October 8–19, offering nine occasions for experts and visitors to discuss current issues in design together.

Creative Academy: Set Tables, Open Minds

The program kicks off with a discussion on gastodesign and the future of hospitality. How does design shape the dining experience, and what new spaces and forms are emerging in the culinary world?

Silent Transitions – Design as Inner Construction

This conversation focuses on the inner dimensions of design: how can creation and visual culture serve as tools for self-knowledge and community development?

FONTFRONT Warm-up – Typography Roundtable

Typography enthusiasts will find their place here in a casual symposium exploring the boundaries of letters: when is a letter simply a letter, and how far can typography’s creative limits be stretched?

How to Protect Your Ideas

This discussion examines the intersection of brand building and legal frameworks. Alongside experts from the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office (SZTNH), creators including Mittersisters and fashion designer Virág Kerényi share insights on protecting and developing creative ideas for the long term.

Artista Fashion – Visual Arts on My Clothes

This workshop highlights the intersection of fashion and visual arts. The conversation explores how a painting can transform into wearable design and how art undergoes a creative metamorphosis when it hits the runway.

Work-Life Boundaries – AMMA Studio

Freelance creators share candid stories about balancing artistic freedom with everyday realities, revealing behind-the-scenes insights and survival strategies.

Mobili Mania – Nordic Flow: When Past Meets Present

This event focuses on the timelessness and quality of Scandinavian design, showing how a 1950s classic and a 2020s design can coexist harmoniously in a single interior.

Design a Flowing Life! – Silent Transitions Roundtable & Workshop

This unique session combines a roundtable discussion with a creative collage workshop, using design tools to support self-awareness, future planning, and the conscious reorganization of daily routines.

Bútoripar+ – Design, But Why?

The final Budapest roundtable examines where and why design is truly needed in the furniture industry and explores collaborations that drive business development.

Debrecen – Which Generation Are You?

At the MODEM Modern and Contemporary Art Center, designers from different generations share experiences about how shifts in perspective affect product appearance, material use, and ways of reaching audiences.

Sopron – Darazsak Akadémia Campus Open Day

Architect Dávid Józsa (Archidoc) leads the roundtable, inviting visitors to a casual professional discussion on current trends, challenges, and the future of architecture.

The Budapest Design Week roundtables showcase the diversity of the design world—from gastronomy to typography, from fashion to sustainability—while giving visitors the opportunity to be active participants rather than mere spectators in the conversation.