Social Design

In the development of the three-year program for LINA, we envisioned a clear route for the activities organised by DAE for the duration of the project. In the first year the focus of our activities lies on expanding the network of the DAE community, by reaching out and introducing new people and approaches to our students. This goal is activated by organising three workshops with LINA fellows for the DAE students of the MA Social Design program.

For the second year we aim to further integrate LINA’s fellows in the teaching activities at the Design Academy. In the second year, after getting to know each other in the first, we intensify our activities and focus on connecting our knowledge in co-creating a short program for DAE students.

In the third year, we strive to further develop the collaboration with LINA fellows and intend to organize a summer program in 2024-25, around ecosocial design practices.

The aim of that specific activity is to translate all that we’ve learned in year one and two, to an educational setting in year three. We work from exchanging methods as a network, to expanding the methods in the network, into transforming those methods. The result of that transformation is yet again, new methods. These new methods, new points of view, are again subject to a cycle of exchange, expansion and transformation. Each activity we organise functions as a stepping stone for the next year and activity. Working towards an upward spiral of creative development, spiralling beyond the three years of LINA.

DAE X LINA FELLOWS

The guiding theme for the ‘22/’23 programme is exchanging, introducing our students to new professionals and approaches. To enforce that goal, in 2023 DAE organized three different workshops, with three different points of view, three different ways of working. Not every DAE student is inspired by the same input. By offering three different workshops, we challenged ourselves in the selection and respected the different creative characters of our students, a quality we value and try to nourish at Design Academy Eindhoven. We invited emerging architects to present their work at and lead educational and inter- active workshops in the MA Social Design department, bringing on design ethics, prototyping, presentation techniques, materials, display methodologies.

Inviting LINA fellows to Eindhoven has a very clear advantage for our community, since the architectural way of working is very methodical. The DAE students can benefit greatly from the architectural approach by learning about new ways to structure their creative process. The choice of LINA fellows was therefore based on their specific and outstanding working method, their different approaches to the creative process in the context of Social Design. In short, Francesca’s approach is focussed on the point of view of a subject within a context. Whilst the practices of Bernadette and Max research the context to determine a position and subject. Laura and Eduard conduct their re- search by picking a subject within a context, to determine a point of view.

FRANCESCA BELTRAME

Date: February 16, 2023

Goal: students can explore the spatiality of their project and/or another perspective/ take on their work.

The workshop of Francesca consisted of three elements;

1. Presentation of Francesca’s method and work, covering the below topics:

• Theoretical framework: decolonial and feminist lens, the role of supply chain capitalism in shaping our infrastructures and cities -> and how space forms and sustains social dynamics
• Research methodology = design practice of care: encounters, interviews, cooking, mapping/embroidery, engaging with communities
• Francesca’s grandmother’s tablecloth: material culture, medium to bring people around the table and talk about policy by levelling the playing field, concept of “prop”
• Film//inscriptions: of the encounters shown in parallel to the inscriptions on the tablecloth.
• Architectural proposal: rethinking public space as a response to racial segregation between urban centres and agricultural fields in Italy, architecture as a scaled up version of the tablecloth.

2. Exchange with the students: practices: The students were invited to think on their design practice in relation to supply chains and the urban scale, architecture and public space as a preparation for the workshop. During the second part of the workshop, a 45 minute discussion, with the above preparation in mind, the students were asked to share some of their work in a discussion.

3. Exchange with the students: objects: For the third part, students were asked to choose an object connected to a project and to discuss it’s specific supply chain and how it arrived to them.

Questions to spark the discussion were asked; “Which spaces, times and communities does it connect directly or indirectly?” and “ How does this object relate to different scales, intimate and distant, individual and collective, bodily and planetary?”

DAE’s biggest take away, after workshop 1, was that we needed to open up the following two workshops to more students. The positive feedback from the students on the first workshop made the team decide there was no benefit in offering it exclusively to Social Design students. Therefore we decided to open up the second and third workshop or a wider range of students. And expand the variety of participants.

BERNADETTE KREJS & MAX ULTECH

Date: May 23, 2023

Goal: creating an open space of exploring, inventing, negotiating and sharing counter-hegemonic design strategies.

Bernadette Krejs (PhD) is an architect/researcher currently based at TU Vienna (Housing and Design). Her work moves in a transdisciplinary field between architecture, housing and visual culture, where she critically engages with various aesthetic practices and politics. Max Utech is an architect working between urbanism, architecture, research and art. He is based at the unit of housing design of TU Vienna and was a fellow at Cité des arts Paris and ZK/U Center for Art/Urbanistics Berlin.

The workshop of Max and Bernadette consisted of a collective production: A radical-cute-magazine-of-Un-Learning was created, collecting student’s personal dissident stories and images of designing otherwise. By sharing both food and thoughts a collaborative magazine was produced to spread counter-knowledge within the DAE community.

As a preparation, students are asked to prepare some food to share and to bring an ”Object of Embodied Knowledge” which represents a dissident experience, story or strategy. The object and its narrative around it formed a key element to the design of the magazine.

The workshop PALACE of UN/LEARNING was focused on questioning the unquestioned in the field of spatial production. In times of multiple crises and uncertainty, we need to unlearn the status quo in order to rethink our disciplines, our teaching and our practices: How and what do we learn? Which knowledge is part of the canon we rely on and what remains invisible? How can we design and plan without exploiting the environment and labor? So, what’s good? Who is we?

The practice, showcased with this workshop, was that of questioning your questioning. Max and Bernadette strongly believe that for creating a sustainable future for our planet, we need to question our design practices and the commodification of our habitats by neoliberal politics.

The practice of questioning the unquestioned (Un/learning) helps to overcome hegemonies, hierarchies, rituals, values and conditions of current heteronormative, capitalist and human-centered spatial production to be able to relearn creating other future spaces of living. Un/learning empowers provocative spirits to become agents of change. It’s the search for ambiguities and niches to enhance and occupy them and for counter-strategies to rethink and draw visual and written narratives.

The term ‘PALACE’ to set the scene for the workshop was chosen to describe a safe place to experiment, provoke, negotiate and claim missing words and spaces for a most diverse, queer, feminist and post-colonial future. It’s a playful overcoming of codes of design, society and aesthetics.

LAURA SOLSONA & EDUARD FERNANDEZ

Date: May 25, 2023

Goal: to build a collective Visual Essay on Eindhoven’s Infrastructures of Resistance in the form of a publication. The presentation of the work will take place in a performative manner, simulating a book launch.

self-office is a small practice that operates between architecture, landscape, and academia. Driven by specific themes and passing fascinations, the office aims to challenge disciplinary conventions to explore alternative realities beyond those driven by the market. Thus, we use space, objects, words, and images as research tools to produce architectural discourse. The office was founded in 2021 by Laura Solsona and Eduard Fernàndez.

The workshop consisted of:

1. An introduction of the self-office and a presentation of the project ‘Infrastructures of Resistance’ followed by a brief exploration of the students work and lecturers to explore new ways of living together

2. A presentation of the activity to the students: exploring the possible “Infrastructures of Resistance” in Eindhoven’s city centre and then collectively work together to create a publication that will build a collective imaginary revealing different acts of resistance of humans and non-humans of Eindhoven.

3. Students explored their areas of choice in groups of approximately 5 students, taking pictures of the area

4. With a template, provided by Laura and Eduard, the students inserted their pictures together with a sentence or definition, forming a chapter of the book each. The result is a visual essay of Eindhoven’s Infrastructures of Resistance.

5. Organising a book launch, presenting all the different chapters as editors of the publication. The book was printed for publication and distribution.