In a on week short project I collided with the Jazz musician Tilmann Dehnhard and my dear colleague form the basic laboratory in our faculty, Johanna Dehio. It was a lot of fun to support the enthusiastic students from various fields (dance, architecture, social- and business communications etc.) in building the awkward and fun sound hullabaloo machine parade. See for yourself

Starting in October I will hold a guest professorship at the University of Arts, Berlin. I am very much looking forward to this great opportunity and I am currently preparing the curriculum. This winter semester we will work at the PORCELAIN EVOLUTION LAB. For the summer semester 2016 I am  preparing a project in the area of social transformation. It is a huge coop. The students will work in interdisciplinary teams of product designers and social- and business communicaters, we work with StartNext, my friend Nadia El-Imam from Edgeryders who runs a research project on OpenCare and Ezio Manzini. The project will be accompanied by exhibitions and talks at Designtransfer. Check out the growing website around it here: HACKING UTOPIA.

Yesterday I attended the semester presentation of ID5, run by my former supervisor Prof. Burkhard Schmitz who created an impressive overview of functional studies with his students. Back in 2007/2008 when I was working at my isopt porcelain project he would already preach the necessity of focusing on new possibilities to integrate function into the geometry of the designed artifact which is an important and basic insight that I pass on to my students as well.

I really hope the results of that show will be published in a book as it would be a wonderful tool to communicate the interconnectedness of material, production process and function resulting in an aesthetic that is pure and obvious.

After the recommendation by Prof. Dieter Raffler back last summer to read the book “think yourself – instructions to oppositions” by Harald Welzer I was grateful to have finally found a public figure who speaks the truth about the failure of our system, the need for each single person to start and get our hands dirty and especially to become active opposers of obvious manipulation that only serves the profit of the few while destroying our environment and resources. And so of course, I had to go and see him in person in the old library at UdK. Welzer is a very smart and eloquent social scientist who knows how to lead (and win) a discussion. However, the victory went to one student who pointed out that while we all sit here and talk about sustainability, why do we need to have all the light bulbs turned on in the room, this said, he turned half of the light off and earned a big applause. I highly recommend to read this book and spread the word. My students in Dessau were very inspired as well.

>> Prof. Dr. Welzer at Futurzwei