Call for Panelists: Rog Forum 2026 - More than Us

This year’s Rog Design Days explores how design can move beyond human-centered thinking and respond more responsibly and empathetically to the complexity of our shared living environment. We are looking for contributions grounded in practice: concrete work, tested ideas, and real-world interventions that open up new ways of designing, making, and living.

Join the Rog Design Days international community - share bold ideas and connect with people ready not only to address pressing challenges, but to act on them.

About Rog Design Days:

Over the course of one week, Rog Design Days brings together three formats of co-creation, exchange and reflection. Rog Creathon gathers 25 young designers in an intensive two-day design sprint to prototype responses to current challenges. Rog Expo presents an exhibition of annual production by local and international creators, while Rog Forum opens a space for in-depth dialogue with leading organisations working across design, research and activism.

The programme is complemented by a wide range of thematic workshops, offering opportunities to dive deeper into topics of particular interest.

Panelists are asked to respond to one of the six topics of the forum:

Speculative Design Towards Positive Utopia

Speculative design reframes design from reactive problem-solving to proactive future-framing, positioning it as a strategic tool for navigating uncertainty. In a fragmented geopolitical context, this opens space for new collective imaginaries and longer-term alignment. Yet without integration into policy, governance, or delivery mechanisms, it risks remaining conceptual rather than transformative.

Rethinking Design: Cruelty-Free Materials and Circular Design

Cruelty-free materials and circular design are not just technical innovations, but signals of a deeper shift in how we understand value and responsibility. At a time when AI is pushing us to question human centrality, this conversation becomes more urgent: if we fear losing our privileged position, how do we account for the ways we have displaced other forms of life?

Intelligence Beyond Humans: Designing with AI

Design has entered an era in which artificial intelligence is no longer just a tool, but an active participant shaping perception, decision-making, and form. Recognizing that technologies are never neutral, this panel invites designers to confront embedded biases, question shifting notions of authorship, and rethink responsibility in a context where agency is distributed across human and non-human actors.

Living Design: Biodiversity, Biofabrication & Ethical Architecture

For architects and product designers experimenting with biofabrication and living materials, this context is crucial. Designing with organisms isn’t just a technical challenge – it is an ecological and ethical one. It demands that we shift from treating life as a resource to integrating biodiversity into the way we conceive buildings and products.

Ecofeminism: Rethinking Power, Gender and Nature

Ecofeminism reveals how the same systems that shape our cities and products are rooted in patriarchal structures that prioritise extraction, control and productivity, while treating both women and nature as passive, available resources. How has design aligned with destructive ideologies and how could it help us to transform and reshape them?

Interspecies Urbanism: Cities for Humans and All the Others

Cities have long been shaped around human needs, often overlooking the many species that also inhabit them. Interspecies urbanism reframes the city as a shared habitat and explores how architecture and urban planning can move toward more inclusive, life-centered approaches.

Who Can Apply?

We invite proposals from English speaking practitioners and organisations, including:

• Representatives of organisations similar to Center Rog
• Innovative design collectives and community-led initiatives
• Representatives of foundations and mission-driven organisations
• Innovative practitioners across design, architecture, crafts, urban planning, and engineering
• Activists working at the intersection of social and environmental change

We are particularly interested in hands-on, practice-based work, including:

• Built projects, prototypes, or implemented solutions
• New materials, processes, or production methods
• Community-based or participatory approaches
• New ways of working, making, or organising
• Material, spatial, or social outcomes

This call is not intended for:

• Purely academic or theoretical research without practical application
• Traditional academic conference papers or lecture-style presentations
• Abstract concepts that have not been tested or implemented
• Portfolio overviews without a clear focus on a specific project, process, or insight
• Promotional presentations without critical insight

We invite proposals for Panel Speakers in one of the six thematic panels.

What we offer:

Center Rog covers travel, visa, accommodation, and forum registration costs for accepted panel speakers from November 25 to November 28.

How to Apply

Applicants are asked to complete an online submission form and upload:

• Abstract (max. 800 words) linked to the chosen forum topic,
• Short biography (max. 100 words),
• Your portrait photograph in high quality.
• Video in English where you describe motivation (3 minutes).

All proposals will be reviewed and selected by an international programme board of experts.

The online submission form can be accessed here:

Application deadline: 15.5.2026, 23:59 CET

Contact:

• Email for inquiries: eva.kraljic@center-rog.si