5. Designing Concerns of Future Cities – Bauhaus Transformed

Organisers:

Peter Friedrich Stephan – Academy of Media Arts Cologne, Germany
Enno Hyttrek – Quilt And Blanket Shanghai, China

Details:

Designers are challenged to conceive socio-designs for future cities that will be driven by digital transformation. For this task we will draw from a parallel situation in history: The German Bauhaus (1919-1932)—part of the European heritage and the start of the Modern Movement—is globally known for addressing the fundamental questions of a technology-driven culture. The Bauhaus masters found answers in a new model of education and production, linking crafts, arts and industry. Today we take this model for an inspiration as we create and anticipate new answers appropriate for our time.

Questions are:
– How can new cultural patterns be created that integrate tradition and digital transformation?
– How to design concerns like health, housing, education, mobility and security?
– How can we advance cultural heritage from China and Europe and build on it?

We introduce the concept of concerns and experiment with designing cultural formats. Design organizes signs, structures and events. Based on universal principles these activities embody qualities that form the building blocks for ethics, services and socio-psychology. Together with the world of smart materials they form future cultural formats.

Fig. 1 Transformation Design redesigns cultural patterns that build on basic universal experiences.

The workshop includes
– Introduction to the concept of concerns based on Actor Network Theory
– Cultural patterns: detect and re-enact socio-technical rituals
– Community: observe attractors and rules, describe dynamics
– Find „matters of concern“, articulate them in a model
– Design new concerns, test implementation

Participants will learn about cultural patterns and the concept of concerns that opens a non-normative and participatory perspective to complement the traditional concept of needs. The transformation of concerns is at the heart of the creative impulse, leading to a new set of professional design competence in Transformation Design.