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This special workshop is an immersive, multi-disciplinary experience exploring the rapidly changing field of product design. Held in Boisbuchet, France, the program will stress a hands-on, making-driven approach to create new points of entry into the enterprise of design. In addition to intensive study, students will have the opportunity ... read more
This special workshop is an immersive, multi-disciplinary experience exploring the rapidly changing field of product design. Held in Boisbuchet, France, the program will stress a hands-on, making-driven approach to create new points of entry into the enterprise of design. In addition to intensive study, students will have the opportunity to swim in the estate's lake, canoe and kayak, take walks through the surrounding woods and relax at the nearby river. Participants feast on farm-to-table nightly dinners with attendees from the two other Boisbuchet workshops taking place that week (approximately 90 people in all), meeting designers from all over the world, and making life-long friendships.
Each day, several facets of the design process will be explored: rapid sketching, brainstorming, materials investigation, prototyping, model building, iteration, narrative creation, sustainability and environmental stewardship. We will complement the studio work with lively debates around the current mandates of design, the challenges of production and consumption, and design's ability to create value and positive social change. The evenings will offer fun, lectures and discussions.
The program is based on the acknowledgement that industrial-age product design has radically changed in recent years, evidenced by its blurring boundaries and explosive range of new practitioners (makers, crafters, technologists, artists), its multi-disciplinary processes, and its varied outputs, or "products of design." Participants will investigate the dynamic opportunities these changes present, and through design thinking, design making, and design telling, will complete the program with new skills, new vocabularies and new fluencies. Less
