Susanne Stauch

social.transformation.system.design.research

The Love School Project, BA design project, UdK, Berlin

Besides the financial support of the school in Nairobi, the goal of the project is diverse: it’s an experiment in co-creation as a new and empowering way to work together internationally, it will sensitize the students to see their work as a creative service in a client relationship and it offers the kids from the Love School Center the opportunity to participate in the purchase of the the grounds and thus support their feeling of self-efficacy. For all participants this project will be an inspiring, mind expanding experience.

With a focus on craft, material understanding and form development the project is dedicated to the number Pi = 3,14… The work will be mostly in porcelain and fine metals, wood and fabric are possible as well. Besides the design process the question of value of those materials, the necessity of new products and the relation to a global social context will be reflected. There is a cooperation with the „Love School Center“ in the Slum Kangemi in Nairobi, Kenya. Through the NGO „NYENDO“ we have the artist and a coordinator Anthony Karori on-site, who will work with the children around the topic of pi and will create drawings, collages, photographs etc. together. In exchange with the students from UdK these first interpretations will be taken up and developed further aesthetically, functionally and formally. The students will be in touch with the kids on a regular basis through skype and the finished design objects will be sold in an auction at the end of the semester. The revenue serves the purchase of land on which the Love School Center stands which is in danger of being cleared out due to speculation.

Concept & Supervision: GastProf. Susanne Stauch, IPP, ID2, UdK
Partner: Irmgard Wutte/ Nyendo NGO
Financial Support: Martin Bisicky & Dominik Becker

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RE/SET – entwurf, knowledge, discipline Conference at HfG Offenbach

As the title already assumes there where three topics and their speakers of which for the the third part, discipline, was the most interesting. I was surprised how intensely theoreticised the talks were that dealt mostly with product semantics and the research tradition of the HfG Offenbach, where it was developed. My favourite talk however was given by Gui Bonsiepe, who questioned the efforts of design to step into the traditional academic approach towards becoming a discipline and reminded the auditorium that already in times of the first methodology conferences back at HfG Ulm they had come to the conclusion that design has to be practical.

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