International Design Workshop Week at the Faculty of Design at HIT

Lecturers from 7 countries and students from abroad in 11 workshops and a series of lectures open to the general public.

Internationa Design Week 2021 program

The Faculty of Design holds an international workshop week on April 18-22, hosting lecturers and students from abroad.
 11 workshops will be delivered by lecturers from design faculties in parallel academic institutions from the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic. The workshops will be conducted in a hybrid format, with communication with lecturers from abroad taking place via the Internet.

This week's workshop revolves around the theme of "design for normative extremism" in order to examine the validity of the systems, programs and modes of operation, in which designers worked until the Corona crisis. Its purpose is to try and understand the nature of the "new normal" that we experience, which oscillates between one extreme situation and another, where processes are intensified and accelerated, and uncertainty is perceived as an existential reality and the extreme becomes normative. 

The aim of the workshops is to offer different strategies for maintaining the resilience of the systems that make up the existing living environment, and at the same time, to see the situation created as an opportunity to develop new design practices for possible future situations that we have not yet experienced.

Among the workshops that will be delivered: The workshop Design for Happiness conducted by lecturers from the University of Salzburg led by Michelle Johnson Prof. Gunther Grall, Dr. Michael Ebner, that relates to the situation where many people , due to the Corona crisis, had to break away from their regular habits and their dear ones.  The aim of the workshop is to   design a physical pavilion and to examine how design can be a factor in establishing happiness; the need for social distancing and the closure of museums as a result, obliged museums to rethink how they conduct themselves and the roles they have to fulfill.

The workshop Design of resilient museums for the future" that will be given by .Dr. Ewa Drygalska and Katarzyna Bazylczyk, from Poland, will examine how museums can take advantage of the crisis created to redefine their mode of operation in a way that will allow them to maintain their relevance in the future as well. The workshop will be held in collaboration with the Tel Aviv Museum and will address the museum's unique demographic, economic and technological contexts;
 Manifesto Workshop - Design for responsibility and solidarity delivered by Polish designer Angieszka Ziemiszewska will deal with design manifestos based on the recognition of the power of design to produce change. As part of the workshop, each student will be asked to design his or her personal manifesto.

During the first four days of the week (18.4-21.4) there will be in addition to the workshops, a series of lectures open to the general public between the hours, 18: 00-19: 00. 
Every day there will be 3 lectures and at the end there will be an open conversation in which the audience may pose questions to the speakers.

Prof. Rama Gheerawo Director of the Helen Hamlin Center for Design at the Royal Academy in London, will talk about how design can be routed to social aspects and be meaningful to people from different backgrounds including: age, gender, race or personal abilities; 
Dr. Oscar Tomico Plasencia Head of the Department of Design and Engineering at the Elisabea Academy in Barcelona and teaches at UT Eindhoven in the Netherlands - will talk about wearable clothing made of soft materials and interactive electronic interfaces;

Kate Armstrong from the Institute of Advanced Architecture - Pub-Love Barcelona, will talk about storytelling as a design practice; Prof. Luca Poncellini, Head of the Design Department at the NABA Academy in Milan, will talk about the changing role of design in contemporary culture.
The workshops and lectures are held in English

We wish to thank the Polish Institute for its generous support in funding the participation of the Polish designers.

Attendance at lectures is free

Posted: 18/04/2021