Atelier workshops

Venue: University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Freilager-Platz 1, 4023 Basel
Date: June 18th – June 20th, 2017

 

The Atelier is the first, application-oriented part of the closing event in June 2017. Participants can choose from three different workshops hosting researchers, educators, design practitioners, and design students from various countries and continents.

All Atelier Workshops will take place simultaneously.

 

Conditions for participation: knowledge of the English language
No participation fee. Registration required.

 

Registration deadline for all workshops: June 12th 2017
Contact for registration: Catherine Walthard, catherine.walthard@fhnw.ch


Schedule

June 18 June 19 June 20
12:00 Welcome Brunch
14:00-17:00 Workshops
09:00-17:00 Workshops 09:00-12:00 Workshops

Camouflage and Object Recognition:
Points of View Challenged

Gilbert Riedelbauch (Canberra, Australia)

Camouflage and Object recognition can be seen as the opposite sides of the same coin. They are connected by contrast – one is actively concealing, while the other tries to understand what there is. This underlying tension will be assessed from a wide variety of view points and is the driving force of this workshop about design education.
By challenging traditional principles of design, participants will advance their individual view and ideas about seeing what would/could be needed in a society the day after tomorrow. Drawing on the diversity of participants’ personal backgrounds – including culture, views and language – personal design strategies can be developed.

 

Workshop Task

Through group work and critique, participants develop approaches to bring their speculative design ideas/concepts into focus. While the outcome of this workshop is open-ended, the documentation of every participant’s ‘process of discovery’ will be recognised as the final object.

 

In preparation

Please bring images/drawings (on paper, digital or bookmarked web-link or other) that you associate with each of the following ten terms: innovation, useful, aesthetic, clear, unobtrusive, honest, durable, thorough, sustainable, essential.

 

Download Workshop Abstract


Design Innovation and Cultural Heritage

Richie Moalosi (Gaborone, Botswana)

Culture is gaining recognition globally as an important driver of sustainable development in the creative economy. The significance of the role of design and culture within the creative industries is under-researched, especially from the new emerging economies perspective.
Therefore, designers need a framework which will guide them on how they can create sustainable, and innovative cultural sensitive products which reflect users’ identities. Codesigning from cultural memory is a new design approach which embeds users’ beliefs, expectations, and expressive values in products and services. The paper discusses two case studies which were conducted in Botswana within the creative industries. The aim was to study how designers imbued cultural memory factors into design features. The paper developed a culture-centred design model after carefully studying how designers identify, transform and imbued cultural memory factors into innovative glocalised products that have local meaning and a global appeal.

 

Keywords

cultural memory, culture-centred design model, creative industries, design innovation, cultural heritage

 

Workshop Task

In groups of 4-5 participants reflect and discuss some ideas or examples from your own country or practice about the strategies on how cultural heritage can be used as a catalyst for design innovation. – Participants are requested to prepare in advance some ideas or examples to be discussed at the Workshop.

 

Download Workshop Abstract


Stories of Kantha

Himadri Hiren Ghosh (Banasthali, India)

Kantha is a fabric made by three generations of women, i.e. Mother, Grandmother, and Great Grandmother of the baby to come, describing their dreams about the baby. Functionally it uses old sarees and clothes of the family which are reused for products to be made for new born babies. Specially the one which touches the baby skin.

The workshop would deal with the interpretation of the dreams on the fabric. The students will be taken into the cultural, social, and the historical implications of this artifact from Bengal and Orissa.

 

Workshop Task / Preparation

Participants are requested to come with any similar interpretation of dreams on fabric that is available in their own country so that their similarities and differences can be studied. This will most probably help in understanding the different cultural perspective.
Download Workshop Abstract


Registration deadline for all workshops: June 12th 2017
Contact for registration: Catherine Walthard, catherine.walthard@fhnw.ch