It's a cloudy day in Mexico City, but that doesn't seem to impede that families and individuals from enjoying a slow Sunday in the Chapultepec Forest. You can hear the usual noise of the city in the background: microbuses picking up people in the nearby main avenue of Reforma, street vendors advertising their products, maybe even a van somewhere with the traditional "se compraaaan, colchoneeees ..." anthem to buy second-hand items. Within this mosaic of events that happen all at the same time, the museums and galleries within the second section of the Bosque host the program for the ninth edition of the Abierto de Diseño CDMX.

Founded in 2013, el Abierto has been a place of constant reflection on the purpose of the design profession in Mexico, inviting all from design students to established professionals to share spaces and dialogues. This year, the event returns with the curatorial project “Maleza: Diseño en Resistencia”, curated by the duo Diseña Colectiva (Taina Campos and Andrea Soler) and Flaminguettes (Daniela Villanueva and Mara Soler). This edition invites us to reflect on the production cycles and underlying purposes that employ design knowledge. Are we really designing a better world? What perspectives and points of view drive that employment? What are the motivations that are inherent to the design profession?

This edition of the Abierto addresses these questions from four conceptual standpoints: Fertility, Pollination, Ecosystems and Buds. The tour begins at the Centro de Cultura Digital in the heart of Reforma with 'Fertility', where artists and designers reflect on how motherhood and care services enable creativity. Back in Chapultepec, children are involved with interventions at the Papalote Museo del Niño, the Lago Algo Gallery within the historical Casa del Lago UNAM, the Aztlán Urban Park, as well as at the Cineteca Nacional and other allied events scattered around the city.

I recently read in The Financial Times an article that speaks precisely of the vocation of the design profession; and how it seems that its practitioners today have renounced their dreams of “changing the world”. In the beginning, the proponents of 'Good Design' justified the superiority of their method through a social vocation. The design wasn't good because it was more 'elegant' or 'beautiful', but it was because it raised people's quality of life and the way we related to objects. We were no longer going to need exaggerated ornaments or furniture, because we were going to have fewer and better things. Fat forward to the era of free trade and individualistic competition, clearly not only has design failed to “change the world”, but that vocation has been corrupted by the competition to produce more things that generate more money. That seems to be the perception of design in industrialized countries, unfortunately. This contrasts with the artisanal nature of our country, in my opinion, we never developed an Industrial Design practice as it developed in the post-war economic boom in European countries, and that was a disadvantage for a long time. However, could now be a key moment in which just that historic difference could present an opportunity to rethink the applications of creative professions? It is encouraging to see that, apparently, in Mexico, designers and designers have not given up their dream of changing the world, or at least, of imagining ways of creating that can change the world. How remains a question in the air, but it's a place to start.

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