Designing Strangeness
This year’s GDI (Global Design Initiatives) topic is Designing Strangeness. This workshop will be placing the participants of the 5 universities in different areas of Tokyo.
This ongoing project is an experiment. The topic of “strangeness” is related to the perception of space (urban space) from a specific identity / perspective. It is about cultural and historical identities and how these are expressed in social practices in urban / rural space and through their culture and how the analysis of cultural identities might be used as design resource. 15 students from 5 schools will do field research, make observations, reflect experiences, develop problem fields, and will come up with an analysis and create a synthesis. This project is also devised for students to engage with other students from the “Global Design Initiative” to jointly explore notions of identity, the self, and representative forms of design. The project also presents the opportunity to explore the strong coherence between PLACE, ROLE / IDENTITY and OBJECT. Students will explore observations, analysis and will come up with provocative types, Provo-types (Boer & Donovan) or plot objects and interventions.