UPCOMING COURSES

Rebuilding a destroyed city is not just replacing or rebuilding its infrastructure and architecture. It is about making the choice which and whose city should be rebuilt. It is a choice as much about the Idea of the city as about its form. A reconstructed city is not just a brick and mortar replacement of everything that was damaged, but also a story of the history and the future of the city. A heavily idealized and edited story, that tells of power structures and ideology. In the reconstruction of cities ruined by war or disaster, questions of identity, ethnicity, history and culture are paramount. From the reconstructed heart of the city of Rotterdam, this seminar will look at a variety of destroyed cities and how they have reinvented themselves or are in the process of doing so. Through lectures, excursions, workshops and conversations the seminar will cover a lot of ground in a short time and provoke an exchange of ideas across borders. Rotterdam will be the fitting background against which this seminar will play out. More info here

For this research by design workshop we have joined forces with Team Thursday – a graphic design studio from Rotterdam, that was founded by Loes van Esch and Simone Trum. They focus on the design of visual identities, books and spatial objects. They do so with a special interest for typography, a curiousness for materials and the possible performativity of an object. Looking for patterns in everything and all around them, they search for how they can transform these into designs. Next to that they regularly teach Typography at ArtEZ in Arnhem and irregularly host exhibitions and events in the front part of their studiospace, TTHQ. More info soon.

For this Craftivism workshop we have teamed up with Beatrice Waanders who is an international renowned textiles artist, based in Rotterdam. Together with Beatrice we will explore how wool could help us stay warm in a time when energy prices are rising. Beatrice travels all around the country to find her wool amongst which from the sheepflock in Rotterdam. The Rotterdam sheepflock cultivates the green spots of the city like parcs and soundwalls along the highway in an ecological way to restore natural biodiversity. They produce about 2000 kilos wool per year but there’s no market. Beatrice aims to value this wool again into a precious artwork. Beatrice is unique in even using the colored stamps of the ram as part of the design. More info here