PIVOT Dublin is the behind Dublin's World Design Capital Bid 2014. ICAD has strongly supported the bid, Led by the City Architects Division in Dublin City Council, since its inception.

World Design Capital is a biennial designation awarded on foot of a competition held by The International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) www.worlddesigncapital.com

Dublin is one of the three shortlisted cities for the 2014 designation and the decision between our city, Bilbao and Cape Town will be announced in October.

Cities that value and apply good design in the way they think, plan and act are better cities. The aim of Pivot Dublin is to make a compelling bid for World Design Capital 2014 and through the bid process develop projects which will create lasting changes designed to benefit the city.

The world is at a pivot point. The systems and structures of the 20th century are crumbling away and we must adopt new approaches to how we live, work, engage with one another, and interact with the planet. Dublin finds itself at a confluence of these global forces, forced to pause, reflect and renew. Dubliners recognise the need for change, the need to reshape our city and its place in the world. We must look to our strengths as we try to navigate a sustainable path through these social, cultural, and economic changes.

One such strength is design. PIVOT Dublin is our response to Dublin’s unleashed potential to use design as the vehicle to turn things inside out; to become something else. We want Dublin to become World Design Capital 2014 and this book ‘PIVOT Dublin’ is a declaration of our intent to offer Dublin as a test-bed for design solutions to local, national and globalchallenges. A pivot creates a departure point, a fulcrum, an angle from which to proceed. It is a step in the process of lining up for the next move. It suggests success, urgency and decisiveness. PIVOT Dublin will be all this and more.

Through resourceful design innovation, we will look at things afresh, rethink the ground-rules and change them for the better. It is an opportunity to reinvent the city; to make the undervalued valued, the ordinary extraordinary.

Dublin, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, is design. In 2014, PIVOT Dublin will turn design inside out.