DAE Research Festival

Celebrating 75 years of Design Academy Eindhoven, the first edition of the DAE Research Festival will take place from March 16–18!

The festival will offer insight into the diverse research practices which Design Academy Eindhoven fosters. Within the Academy, this manifests in a diverse variety of approaches towards methodologies and understandings of what research is. In a constantly changing world, research is the backbone of DAE’s approach to education, and an integral part of design processes and design culture; it’s a manner of posing questions, which shape and reframe the role and meaning of design and the role of the designer. 

Next to the MA Department Heads and Professors of DAE, Ian Biscoe, Annika Frye, Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi of Formafantasma, Joost Grootens, Afaina de Jong, Saskia van Stein and Marina Otero Verzier, speakers will include industry experts, designers, artists and technologists such as Daniel Büning, Prof Dr Pablo Cesar, Wenting Cheng, Vera Glahn, Dr Ruairi Glynn, Bianca Herlo, Jack Jansen, Anastasia Kubrak, Jenn Leung, Prof Patrick Müller and students from ZhdK, Serra Ozdemir, Rebecca Schedler, Serina Tarkhanian, Vincent Thornhill, UN Studio, Benjamin Unterluggauer, Arshija Vij, Matthias Wittmann and Dr Fiona Zisch.     

Day one—KNOWN OTHERWISE: New Paradigms for Research and Critical Design Practice   
Design Academy Eindhoven has long been associated with the design d’auteur: design practices with a strong signature, distinctive critical and material thought, and a devotion to experimentation. These designers were able to resist market pressures and a product-oriented mentality, and their designs led to specific outputs, whether new materials, objects, or processes.

Today, DAE is a design school as well as a knowledge and research institution that fosters discussion about the state of the discipline. New generations of designers challenge contemporary socio-economic, political and legal norms through collaborative knowledge production and critical dialogue. Notions of autonomy and design research are continuously redefined with an emphasis on collaboration, based upon the need to form larger alliances.

Known Otherwise addresses areas of research, which are central to contemporary transformations in design thinking and practice, and are crucial to education at DAE. Its aim is to offer possibilities for imagining and designing the world otherwise, through a continuous redefinition of notions of matter, time and scale.

Known Otherwise is hosted by the Master departments of Design Academy Eindhoven.

Day two & three—UNFOLDING SPACES: Design Education, Identities and Metaverses   
The digital spaces and realities of our connected world are in constant flux. In the past 30 years, we have transitioned from the flat, slow loading, broken link, early machinations of the World Wide Web to 100-million user online virtual worlds.

Unfolding Spaces views metaverses, the digital environments we inhabit, as a visionary, almost utopian space of learning, research, and open communication. 

During the programme, we will discuss, present, debate and test interactions within a metaverse, and consider its potentials for education and research on five layers: space, hybridity, power structures, liveness, and building together. Casting aside the dystopian problematic of spending our lives online while the world around us decays, Unfolding Spaces will investigate the opportunities of a metaverse as a more utopian place, part of a desirable future where education and research can prosper: A geographically distributed venue which offers new tools, relevancy and context to the physical world in which we coexist.

Unfolding Spaces is hosted by the Professorships of Design Academy Eindhoven.

Registration for the the DAE Research Festival is open. The event is free to attend. Find information on how to register and more info about the event on the website of Design Academy Eindhoven, here.