PASSAGEN, Germany’s biggest design event, opens every year the international design season with projects, exhibitions and presentations by the crème de la crème of the international design circuit. With Cologne becoming the design venue, PASSAGEN unfolds its extensive panorama: the protagonists are traditional independent designers and young networks, universities, newcomers, institutions, architects, the media and mediators. Offering 100% design, for one week, all of them will be cheek-by-jowl, closely threaded like pearls along the city centre parcours and the ‘Ring’ boulevard, in the Rheinauhafen harbour, in Deutz and in Cologne’s creative hub Ehrenfeld. PASSAGEN presents the theme of design, both pure and in combination with architecture in an urban context. The programme also takes in social challenges for design, in particular themes such as sustainability and ecology, aesthetics and popular culture, crossover in the context of design, transformation and urbanism. As a platform for current trends in design, architecture, living and urban developments, PASSAGEN is once again the temporary design mecca, with the whole of Cologne ‘going design’ in January. Contact: info@voggenreiter.com