A design forum, I realised, is not a space defined within walls or screens, but rather by friction. And by friction, oh yes, I mean the productive kind (let’s fix that for now). The kind of friction that makes you question your assumptions and redraw your lines again and again. A place where criticism becomes the currency and vulnerability is quietly respected.

It can also be deeply human: messy, opinionated, and full of contradictions. One person talks about sustainability, another about symbolism, while someone else questions whether architecture should even mean anything anymore! Yet in that overlapping noise, something begins to take shape: a shared language, an evolving consciousness of what design can do, not just what it can look like.

Behind the scenes, the making of the forum feels less like organising an event and more like a pure orgasm of ideas; chaotic, messy, and utterly exhilarating! Every debate, every scribble on a sketchbook, sends little sparks of creation flying; it’s messy, awkward, and somehow completely satisfying when everything clicks. At times, it also feels like an act of translation: between ideologies, between mediums, between people. We are constantly interpreting and reinterpreting, asking ourselves what good design is, what it should respond to, but honestly, who gets to decide that? Perhaps that is the point, that a design forum is not meant to answer those questions, but to hold them suspended between voices willing to keep asking.

In the end, the making of a design forum becomes the making of dialogue itself: the deliberate act of slowing down to listen, to question, to unlearn. It is not about agreement but alignment; not about presenting work, but revealing thought. And perhaps, if we are lucky, amidst the sketches, critiques, and laughter, we will realise that the forum was never about design objects at all, but about designing a culture of thinking together. This time, it feels especially raw, real, and humble; less about polished presentations and more about honest conversations, about showing the process rather than the perfection.

A design forum, as I can summarise, is not a temple of thought; it is a circus! The architects are the clowns, the panellists are the tightrope walkers, and the audience is still trying to figure out if this is all part of the act. And yet, somehow, it works. And perhaps that is the secret: design forums are less about structure and more about the spectacle. They are proof that when designers come together, we do not solve problems; we design better-looking ones :)