Internationally renowned design studio UXUS will offer specialized workshops to MIARD students, focusing on the emerging role of the retail/trade industry, while talking specifically on their design philosophy “brand poetry” from the perspective of brand creation and storytelling.

Founded in Amsterdam in 2003, UXUS is an international multidisciplinary and award winning design agency specializing in strategic design solutions. UXUS recently won the global tender to design the retail spaces for the remodel and new extension of the Tate Modern in London, by Herzog & de Meuron.

On Wednesday October 26, the second year students of the Master Interior Architecture & Retail Design programme have followed a workshop on creative business practices  by Ries Meertens This workshop is part of their module in Professional Practices.

Workshop:
Ries Meertens: “In my workshop I am telling about my own experience as a starting designer towards being a partner of a big design office plus how I started my business for a second time, how I created and applied my strategic business model for myself and other creative entrepreneurs successfully. Students gain insight from my practical experience and learn how to apply a very practical and useful business model for creatives.

At Coaching Creative Companies I inspire and support creative entrepreneurs at the definition and realisation of their ambitions and at finding answers on various business issues. All this based on my Strategic Business Model and the broad experience that I gained in 18 years as co-founder and partner of MMID full service design team, one of the most successful product design agencies in the Netherlands with more than 35 employees.”

Project: Skyline Spittelau (2008)
Architect: S.Tillner A.Willinger
Location: Gürtel Boulevard, Vienna
Photographs: Rupert Steiner

Silvio Carta is one of the tutors of the Master Interior Architecture & Retail Design programme. As part of the Trimester 1 Research Seminar of this programme, Silvio has given two lecturex on Hybrid Urban Spaces in a Diverse Urban Context. The first lecture was about Transitional Spaces, the second lecture was about Interstitial Spaces.

Transitional Spaces
After a brief introduction on the topic, this lecture explained several projects that create hybrid transitional spaces by means of their shape or programme organisation.

Interstitial Spaces
This lecture mentioned several fundamental studies about the “interstitial elements” like Peter Eisenman’s and Toyo Ito’s (blurring architecture). Several projects were analysed ranging from different scales: from houses to large public interventions, discussing the “infill” of existing interstitial spaces (like leftovers) or the creation of new ones as part of the design.

Project: 2501 (2009)
Architect: October + Sekino Architects Office
Location: Nerima-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Photographs:  courtesy of the architect (©Hiroyuki Hirai)

Digital Garden, a project by course director Alex Suarez is exhibited at  Dutch Design Week.  The project explores elements of the physical environment by using modular systems and assembly techniques to investigate scale, aggregation, materials and effect, while closely working with digital fabrication tools.

The subject matter was motivated by both the floral landscapes patching the Netherlands and a curiosity about botanical illustrations as the art of recording the structure, scale, detail and color of plant species.

The floral modules were printed using a 3D color printer; units vary in design, from flat and planar to expanding ornate structures. They are arranged and fastened on a CNC-milled lattice substrate that is hand-treated with organic pigments.

Digital Garden encourages the viewer to experience and question an alternative [land]scape between the natural and synthetic.

The project was made during a CAD/CAM residency at Sundaymorning@EKWC, European Ceramic Work Center, NL.

Lecture Mark Terkessidis – open to all the Piet Zwart Institute students

Date: November 01 2011
Time: 10:00  – 11:30 hrs including Q&A
Location: Piet Zwart Institute – Large project room
Address: Karel Doormanhof 45, Rotterdam

Continental Europe never developed an original idea of cultural diversity. Diversity was introduced as a purely negative token, as rupture in the concept of the national. Diversity within societies was recognised either in terms of absence (post-holocaust) or as re-appearance (post-colonial).

But how can diversity be thought of as “post-migrational”? Cities have always been shaped by mobility and migration. So-called globalisation, however, has renewed and accelerated this process. Cities are no longer defined by dwelling but by movement. The city has hence become a vague entity, a “Parapolis”. What is the state of culture in the Parapolis? What is its position in space and time, its ethics and aesthetics, its legitimation and policies? Culture has become part of an urban environment that is defined a forced-upon, sometimes spooky historicity, coincidences and juxtapositions, arbitrariness of references and longing for new coherence.

For an ethics of culture in Parapolis, one may go back to founding texts of Western civilisation. In Homer’s Ulysses is typically seen as the bearer of the Western idea of individual freedom. But he is on a quest for home, which makes him a free human being and a citizen at the same time. The Ulysses of the “Ilias”, “at home” with his fellow Greeks and ready to expand their territory, is a brutal slaughterer. When he returns home at the end of the epic, he commits a massacre in order to be “at home” again and homogenise this territory. The quest for home therefore is the true state of civility.

In Parapolis, dwellers live a “Phililhellenism” of the kind described by Greek writer Mimika Cranaki during his emigration in Paris. The nation no longer works as a homeland, but is still there as an imaginary place. The search for home should therefore be no longer considered transitional, but the essence of civility. Culture has the potential of being the location for negotiating this search. Traditionally, aesthetics has close ties to the concept of emancipation – and its underbelly, the desire of nations and educated middle classes to set themselves apart from others. The aesthetics of culture in Parapolis needs to be more “conversational” and participatory along the lines of, for example, Grant H. Kester. In the aftermath of boding, there seems to be a need for more “banding”. It could therefore make sense to consider any utterance – whether art or not – culture, and focus on “atmospheres” rather than meaning. The culture of Parapolis is not just about diversity, but abundance.

On the basis of these considerations, this lecture will propose a programme of interculture, focusing on the individual with his/her diverse backgrounds and qualifications, and with the potential to open up a new space for negotiating community.

Mark Terkessidis is currently a guest researcher in the lectoraat Cultural Diversity within the research centre Creating 010 of the Rotterdam University.

From 1992 to 1994, he was an editor of the German pop culture magazine “Spex”. From 2003 to 2011 he worked as a host for the intercultural radio programme “Funkhaus Europa” of the West German public broadcasting service. Mark wrote numerous essays on youth and pop culture, migration and racism for German newspapers, magazines and public radio. Together with Tom Holert, he is the co-founder of the Cologne-based Institute for Studies in Visual Culture (isvc.org).