Studios – Where does an egg go?

Spaces & Participation

This studio locates design, in an active and transformative capacity, within complex socio- political networks. It aims to explore ‘ways of acting’ within systems of control as well as new modes of public participation and engagement spanning performance and activism. The studio explores relations between the physicality of space, people and use. We will begin to negotiate and shape behaviours, and (inter) actions in responsive and innovative ways through an understanding of space as transformative in relation to context, site and situation – from personal and intimate to architectural and planetary. We embrace the complexities of contested spaces, often hidden behind a language of efficiency, improvement and regulation to explore power relations in the arrangements and movements of the systems and structures we inhabit.

Communication & Experience

The studio focuses on investigation and communication, acknowledging a clear interdependency between ‘content’ (that being investigated) and ‘container’ (the exploration of the means of communication). Following an interpretative or curatorial process, we encourage the exploration of new formats and languages of communication using all means and media, through an interplay of space, objects, film, comics, gaming, language, graphics, etc. The work we support seeks to engage with the public, not as audience, but as co- respondents, co-authors and co-inspirators.

Fashions & Embodiment

This studio facilitates conversations between making and unmaking, global and local, ethics and aesthetics, object and system, bodies and clothes. We challenge accepted boundaries and perceptions to explore fashion as a mode of collective agency. This requires questioning the relationship between fashion and consumption and generating knowledge and approaches that foster the transformative capacities of fashion and dress. We aim to broaden and reposition fashion practice through rethinking the relationships between garment, image, text, body and context to explore innovative ways of thinking, making and doing fashion.

Innovation & Service

This studio reaches out to emerging areas of design and wider forms of knowledge to expand innovation. At the centre of this is the development of new processes that shape the future of innovation, and the practices that constitute it. We explore how design can empower society, from the individual citizen to larger organisations that make up our social and cultural worlds. We want our students to take responsibility through their practice, developing creative precision in your analysis and application of design in the world. The studio embraces an informed and critical understanding of the context of innovation projects, generating values that have a positive effect.

Interactions & Engagement

This studio explores how modes of engagement with interactive technologies shape and mediate society and culture. In this, technology is not neutral and we resist hardware- generated descriptions. We analyse inherited modes of engagement (such as co-design, public engagement, user centred design, human computer interaction) and data collections to extend and challenge the understanding of methodological innovation. We draw on science and technology studies (STS), empirical speculation and biotech industries to develop experimental modes of engagement that reconsider the nature of emerging technologies in society.