workshop: soft landing prototypes . . .

“life is not about finding yourself, it’s about creating yourself.” george bernard shaw

a summer workshop at bauhaus university weimar: soft landing prototypes . . .

in their own words: comments, thoughts & reflections from participants, bauhaus summer school in weimar 2013

01) here are some examples from our workshop:
lina zatceliapina’s & huang mengqi’s process guide

beulah wong’s & jana hartmann’s process guide

carlos quesada’s & kirk newton’s process guide

eva thinius’ & winston mitchel’s process guide

02) approach and method:
the work method of this course can be describe as “making meaning.” the work will be generated in a art and design studio manner, with a combination of an iterative, trial & error, prototyping process toward the culmination of a final design direction. the instructors of this course believe the observations of each individual member are invaluable to the entire group. a socratic approach of dialogue will be used, in order to establish a point of departure for this shared adventure.

03) goal:
design development is traveling very fast these days, due partly to digital tools, connected dialogue and globalization. the overall objective of this workshop to to help you have a more conceptual, fluid flow between the first idea for a new product (or other designed objects, such as an architectural space or possibly a building volume) and the first prototype in design development. in addition, to cultivate a better understanding of how and why smart soft prototyping can effect your individual design process. there will be the educational experience of working with a group of diverse, yet like minded, rather talented people for a brief, but intense, moment over the two week period. this course offering will conclude with a final design presentation and celebration venue on friday, august 16th. each member of the group will be requested to submit an individual process guide of their conclusions, with documentation (both visual and with written description) of their out-comes, deliverables, design prototypes, etc. the process guide will be in both a digital as well as a hard copy format.

04) who taught this course ?
this is a team-taught course; we are sven brandelius and matthew burger. sven brandelius holds a diploma in architecture from the bauhaus university weimar. he has experience working in the field of social design in the united states, brazil and has also worked for universal design in germany. currently sven is working as an architect with neumeister & paringer in bavaria. matthew burger is currently working with jakob timpe and the university of applied sciences regensburg, bavaria, as co-founder and developer of a new hybrid program of industrial design. matthew’s academic degrees are in the areas of industrial design, from pratt institute, brooklyn new york and visual communication from the hochschule für gestaltung & kunst, basel switzerland. as designers and educators, we have an interest in a rather wide range of conceptual thinking related to the context of interdisciplinary design, art and architecture. we would invite to take a look at our bauhaus workshop, held in 2012:

light, design, & spacial ambience