Thirty-four students from the Photo/Video FVPCI department at the National University of Arts in Bucharest developed different themes referring to their home city of Bucharest. Abandond places were visited and documented, traffic problems visualized and poetic interpretations of the city were designed.
During five days we explored their city together with pupils from a German high school, students, teachers, librarians and biologists, people of all different ages. The project was supported and facilitated by the Centrul Cultural German Sibiu. It showed that the project also works with a very divers group of people, the age of participants ranging from 13 years to 60 years old. Everybody has a story to tell or wants to change something in their own home city. Sibiu/Hermannstadt is a city in Transylvania, Romania, with a population of around 145.000 inhabitants. The first official record referring to the Sibiu area comes from 1191. In 2007 Sibiu/Hermannstadt was designated ‘the European Capital of Culture’.
Product design students from Transylvania University and people from various institutions of different ages worked together with us in this week. Participants proposing an individual typography for Brasov, developing a traffic survival kit, comparing the past and present of the city, analysing specific neighbourhoods and streets or promoting Braşov as the forgotten homeland of many of German emigrants. Braşov/Kronstadt is a city in Transylvania, Romania, with a population of around 253.000 inhabitants. It is located some 166 km north of Bucharest.
Students from the graphic design department of the Vest University, in Timișoara, Romania, explored their city for one week. Timișoara is the 3rd largest city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the Banat region, it represents an interesting mix of people with different ethical backgrounds: Romanians, Germans, Serbs and Hungarians. Supported by the Centrul Cultural German Timișoara, we and the students made the first research considering Timișoara candidacy for the European Capital of Culture in 2021.
The outcome is a result of a workshop at the School of Design at the University of Zagreb, Croatia.
The participants created campaigns for street artists, showing how easily vegetables can be grown in the context of a city, rediscovering forgotten art and sculptures, creating a campaign for a neighborhood or developing a new identity for a modern progressive Zagreb. The name and cover of the magazine refers to a popular habit of the inhabitants – to meet, chill and drink a coffee; instead of turning something into action. The image emphasises that that from talking – new ideas can grow.
For the One Design Week Plovdiv 2015 we were asked to conduct a workshop with a group of local professionals in the city of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. During the festival we also created a personal social design project with the title ‘Wisdoms of the neighbourhood’. Giving the local people and small shop owners a voice of the festival by using their statements on posters and spreading them to a wider audience. In 2019 Plovdiv wants to become the European Capital of Culture.
This publication is the outcome of the third workshop conducted together with students from the graphic, interior and industrial design department of the university ‘George Enescu’, in Iași, Romania. Located in the Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life. Nearly one third of Iași’s inhabitants are students, making the city a breeding ground for a new academic generation.
The Łódź Design Festival 2015 invited us to conduct the workshop for four days in the city Łódź.
It is the third-largest city in Poland, located in the central part of the country. In the 19th century it experienced a golden age with the beginning of the industrial revolution. It was famous for its production of textile with many factories throughout the whole city. After the break down of the Warsaw Pact in the late eighties the industrial city lost its power and significance. Nowadays the city is redefining itself successfully inside its postindustrial heritage. David Lynch is a honorary citizen of Łódź and used the inspiring postindustrial landscape in his film ‘Inland Empire’.
During the Design Week Mexico 2015, young creative professionals and students of Mexico’s biggest design school, CENTRO, explored different facets of this latin metropol. The participants documented and examined public squares, the local subway vendors, slogans and sounds of the informal street sellers, analyzing the city’s waste collection system and finding tools to stimulate exchange between inhabitants. The Design Week Mexico hosts in total 105 events with around 1000 different participants and organizations, visited by around 26.000 people.
During the the 6th edition of the ‘calligraphy & typography festival’ organized by the graphic design department of the Anadolu University in Eskişehir, Turkey, we were invited to explore the city together with 16 students. The Festival is an international event with a divers range of designers organizing typography and design workshops. Eskişehir is located in northwestern part of Turkey. The population of the city is around 650.000 and more than 50 thousand students are based in the city.
