Workshop Days & Design Camp 2023: "Gross world happiness"
On the workshop days, our students switch sides and look for a course in a different degree program. This way they get to know other techniques and other people - interdisciplinary! The topic for 2023 was "Gross world happiness": What do we need for a good existence? It feels like one crisis follows the next. What makes us happy, what strengthens our satisfaction, where can designers start?
Our design campers, pupils who want to get to know our faculty and worked together with the students, were also there. At the end, there was a joint exhibition in the auditorium with all the results. It was great!
Photos: Harald Koch
These were our workshops:
Can there be gross world happiness as long as there is still oppression and exploitation in the world? The answer to this question in the workshop "Happiness is always also the happiness of others" led by Prof. Silke Helmerdig was a large collage, a hidden object picture of art, everyday life and politics.
In the workshop by Simone Sommer and Prof. Manuel Aydt - "Gross world happiness and climate justice - an introduction to circular design principles " - the students dealt with resource conservation and environmental protection in product design: using the example of a jacket, a sneaker and the Bobby Car, all three of which were dissected and analyzed down to their individual parts.
With Prof. Dr. Thomas Hensel, Monika Markert and Felicia Mülbaier, the students reflected on the "cult of locomotion", the widely varying social roles of the car and how they relate to individual happiness.
The workshop "aeternitas" by Prof. Vito Pace and Theresia Brandner was a radical examination of death. How do you want to be remembered, what can you draw from it as a designer?
The students were able to sculpt their own favorite animated character in the "Character Maquette Sculpting" workshop with Prof. Tanja Krampfert. It's unbelievable what can be created from wire, aluminum foil and modeling clay, deceptively real!
The "reDRESSING Happiness" workshop by Prof. Sibylle Klose and Claudia Grimm was all about fashion. Great new outfits were created from old knitted items!
Benjamin Weiler's illustration workshop "Happinexus" focused on the happiness of the individual and the happiness of the community - expressed in a series of postcards.
Students sewed their own mittens in the "Warm hands - warm heart" workshop with Evelyn Toomistu.
And because making things yourself makes you happy, Roderick Pieters showed how to make your own sneakers in the "Mindful Shoes" workshop.
Catherine Francois went back to the roots in the "Black Art - Exploring Lead Typesetting" workshop: letterpress printing without a computer, assembling many individual millimeter-sized lead letters into a word and putting it on paper with a printing press.
The students were able to test and improve their own product ideas for sustainability in Philipp Preiss' workshop. Along the way, they learned the basics of sustainability assessment and sustainability management.
"Draping like cooking": In Prof. Tamotsu Kondo's workshop, the students designed their own idea for an outfit. Draping means creating the pattern directly on a dressmaker's dummy or on the body. This craft originally emerged in Paris in the 1950s: A dress was created for the big shows for a single mannequin and a single occasion.
Medals carry a message on both sides, in the sand casting workshop "Share!" this message was a separate thought on the proverb 'Shared happiness is double happiness'. With the jewelry team consisting of Prof. Andi Gut, Gabriele Maier, Spencer Gaudoin and Frank Wüst, the students produced their own molds, mixed their own sand according to an old Indian recipe and finally cast the medals.