Designs for our times

This year is already going down as the year that art and design got active. The Art Gym from Turner Prize-winning architecture collective Assemble encourages participants to reverse the power hierarchies normally present in galleries and take things into their own hands.

A new exhibition from Anton Alvarez at the National Centre for Craft and Design also presents design as a participatory process rather than closed system. Alvarez is best known for his thread-wrapping machine, which he presented at Design Miami/Basel 2013.

Alphabet Aerobics looks more like a production line than an exhibition show and challenges the definition of maker, curator and viewer. The result is an autogenic exhibition space that is constantly in the process of making itself.