Pedagogies of the Sea
GEO–DESIGN 1st year Master’s Programme

Pedagogies of the Sea is a design-research course at the GEO–DESIGN two-year Master Programme at Design Academy Eindhoven, that approaches the ocean from an ontological perspective. Intended as a pedagogical experience, it explored how to look at a hyper object such as the ocean can foster the ability of designers to navigate through the ecology of thinking at multiple scales, recognizing challenges, inequalities and interdependences that happen at the sea, still represented by the politics of hierarchical mechanisms that have underpinned the Cartesian idea of navigating as a form of exploitation – of human and other-than-human bodies and resources.

By using storytelling as a method, during an entire afternoon students will perform through different formats and media, shaping a performative and temporary exhibition that aims to enact wet, unstable and embodied ways of connecting with the element, as it could unveil realities and entanglements of the sea that remained invisible to a merely terracentric perspective.

Presentations by: Yassine Ben Abdallah, Moe Asari, Felix Bell, Kathleen Berthus, Elsa Casanova Sampé, Gianmarco Ciucciovè, Julien Frédéric Benoit Chaintreau, Connor Cook, Stefano Fusani, Gudrun Eriksen Havsteen-Mikkelsen, Ayla Kekhia, Emmie Massias, Jaykishan Mistry, Claudia Paredes Intriago, Sebastian Quijada Link, Anna Perugini, Gerardo Sandoval Osio, Julia Urreaga Aizarna, Anna Alessia Viggiano and Lorenzo Vitagliano.

GEO–DESIGN is a platform to explore the social, economic, territorial, and geopolitical forces shaping design today. The GEO–DESIGN Master’s department at Design Academy Eindhoven acknowledges the legacy of industrial production as the fundamental source for the expertise and agency of the designer in contemporary society while problematizing and addressing its historic contribution to environmental and social instability and its incompatibility with models of sustainable or even survivable futures. The GEO–DESIGN department is headed by Formafantasma (Simone Farresin & Andrea Trimarchi).

Tutors

Formafantasma is a research-based design studio investigating the ecological, historical, political and social forces shaping the discipline of design today.
Since founding the studio in 2009, Italians Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin have championed the need for value-laden advocacy merged with holistic design thinking. Their aim is to facilitate a deeper understanding of both our natural and built environments and to propose transformative interventions through design and its material, technical, social, and discursive possibilities. Working from their studio in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, the practice embraces a broad spectrum of typologies and methods, from product design through spatial design, strategic planning and design consultancy. Whether designing to a client's brief or developing self – initiated projects, the studio applies the same rigorous attention to context, process and detail. As a result, Formafantasma's entire portfolio is characterised by a coherent visual language and meticulously researched outcomes. For Formafantasma, this crossflow of knowledge and experience taken from both their commercial contracts and their more autonomous projects has benefitted and informed the respective other. It has also given them a unique perspective of the design industry, allowing them to acknowledge the legacy of industrial production as the fundamental source for the designer's expertise and agency in contemporary society while also addressing its historic contribution to environmental instability.

Paolo Patelli manipulates architecture, design, and artistic practice. Through artistic methods and often collaborative enquiries, he engages with the materialities, scenes and atmospheres at the intersections of space and society, technologies and environments. He is a 2020/2021 Fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude. He teaches at Design Academy Eindhoven and at Sandberg Instituut. He holds a PhD from Politecnico di Milano.

Angela Rui is a curator and researcher based in Milan who works in design theory and criticism. She believes that design is positioned as a critical practice that problematises conventional ways of inhabiting and experiencing the world, and that designers could operate in domains that demand their capacity to translate, raise awareness and visualise challenges and inequalities as well as currently unrecognised collective commons. Among other projects, she co-curated I See That I See What You don’t See the Dutch Pavilion for Broken Nature – XXII Triennale di Milano (2019), and Faraway So Close – the 25th Design Biennial of Ljubljana (2017). She is the curator of AQUARIA – Or the Illusion of a Boxed Sea, now on view at maat. She is currently teaching at the Geo-Design Master Program - Design Academy Eindhoven, and at the NABA (Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Milano). She holds a PhD in Interior Architecture and Exhibition Design from Politecnico di Milano, Faculty of Architecture.

Special guest

Francisco Laranjo is a graphic designer and researcher. PhD in design methods and criticism from the University of the Arts London and an MA in Visual Communication from the Royal College of Art. His writings have been published on Design Observer, Eye, Creative Review, Grafik, Eye on Design, Público, among others. He has been a visiting and guest lecturer at the Sandberg Institute (NL), CalArts (US), Royal College of Art, London College of Communication (UK), Zürich University of the Arts, University of the Arts Bern (Switzerland) and speaker at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Austria), University of South Australia (AUS), University of the Arts Split (Croatia), University of Porto, University of Lisbon (Portugal), among others. He is an Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins, editor of the journal Modes of Criticism, co-director of the Shared Institute, Assistant Professor of Design at Universidade Lusófona and Director of the Center for Other Worlds.