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  1. Departments
  2. Design
More: Design

Initiatives

The Department of Design maintains a variety of initiatives and projects. These provide content to the outside world, allow students to collaborate with their international counterparts, promote exchange within and beyond the department or give young people an understanding of design as a discipline.

REFRESH

REFRESH is an initiative by the Department of Design and the Immersive Arts Space of the Zurich University of the Arts. Under the title «Experimental Futures and Immersive Experiences», REFRESH (talks, exhibition, workshop, performances) brings together designers, artists, researchers and experts from Switzerland and abroad to anticipate possible futures for Design and the Arts.

Many outstanding and internationally renowned designers, artists and experts joined the previous editions, such as Thomas Oberender (Curator & Artistic Director of the Berliner Festspiele), Sarah Ellis (Director of Digital Development, Royal Shakespeare Company), Yasaman Sheri (Design Direction Augmentation & Sensing), Erika Marthins (Artrebels), Tobias Gremmler (Digital Artist), Galit Ariel (Augmented Human/Digital Identities) or Andreas Refsgaard (Artist & Creative Coder), Takeshi Yamada (teamLab), Léa Pereyre (Verity Studios).

The festival takes place yearly in mid of September at Toni-Areal in cooperation with Digital Festival. Participation in the festival is free of charge.

Website: refresh.zhdk.ch

Initiated by:
Departement of Design, Immersive Arts Space

Head of Festival & Curation:
Maike Thies, Christian Iseli

Scenography:
Stephan Wespi

Identity & Branding:
Patrik Ferrarelli

Showcase Design

The web platform "Showcase Design" pools the creative potential of the Department of Design at Zurich University of the Arts, making it accessible interactively while demonstrating its full scope and diversity. An interested public can view all the award-nominated dissertations from the Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes at the Department of Design, across the different specialisations. The platform provides a forum for the designers behind the projects, offers opportunities for contacts and acts as a showcase for the department. Since 2018, the project has been updated annually.

Website: showcasedesign.zhdk.ch

Inititiated by:
Department of Design, Zurich University of the Arts

Head of Project:
Frederic Poppenhäger, Maike Thies

Not at Your Service: Manifestos for Design

The publication «Not at Your Service: Manifestos for Design» consolidates the wide variety of beliefs, subjects and practices of contemporary designers at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). It offers different approaches and insights regarding the present-day role and nature of design, and the impact it can have. It is not conceived as a finished project, but as a free-thinking testimony of its time.

Collaborative design, interaction within complex systems, attention economics, the ecological shift, visual literacy, gender-neutral design, environmentally detrimental design, «quick and dirty» design ethnography, presence and trust, social responsibility, the value of ugliness, death futures, immersive technologies, identity and crises, design as a transformative discipline, Design Your Future – all of these topics are presented in this reader in random order but with passion, personal conviction and professional expertise, and offered up for debate.

The publication is published by Birkhäuser Verlag and can be downloaded as a PDF free of charge.

Editors:
Head of Department Hansuli Matter, Björn Franke

Initiated by:
Department of Design, Zurich University of the Arts

Design and Identity:
Offshore Studio

Date of publication:
Autumn 2020

With contributions from: Karmen Franinovic, Nicole Fölsterli, Ulrich Götz, Flurina Gradin, Niklaus Heeb, Larissa Holaschke, Margarete Jahrmann, Sandra Kaufmann, Nicole Kind, Roman Kirschner, Michael Krohn, Francis Müller Lisa Ochsenbein, Sarah Owens, Antoni Scarponi, Reinhard Schmidt, Karin Seiler, Bitten Stetter, Maike Thies, Katharina Tietze, Stefano Vanotti, Margarete von Lupin, Martin Zimper, Corina Zuberbühler

International Design Summer School

Building on the projects “Welcome2India” and “WuZu” the International Design Summer School (IDSS) is currently being run together with a host of partner schools in India and China and has been alternately hosted in China, India and Switzerland annually since 2013. The format of this project is unique in the tertiary education sector. As part of the two-week summer school, a total of 40 students in intercultural teams develop projects on contemporary issues.

Design for Social Impact

“Design for Social Impact” places the original idea of design, i.e. the improvement of the living conditions of all people, in the foreground and considers it in the context of social and global hotspots.
In a world in which increasingly artificially created needs are to be satisfied, “Design for Social Impact” focuses on addressing social issues in order to contribute to a sustainable quality of life. The aim is to carry out teaching and research projects that make design effective as a catalyst for social and societal change. This includes issues such as migration, the ageing of society, religion, sustainable lifestyles and co-design in development contexts.

https://blog.zhdk.ch/designsocialimpact

Design for Sustainable Change

What can the Design discipline contribute to the sustainable development of our world? Since 2018, the exhibition and exchange format «Design for Sustainable Change» has been held annually in autumn in cooperation with the Department of Environmental Systems Sciences at ETH Zurich.

Selected diploma theses and teaching projects from the Department of Design that deal with issues of sustainable development are presented and discussed. The platform serves the transdisciplinary exchange between students, alumni and lecturers of both departments.

In 2020 no exhibition format will be realized. However, current projects of the Department of Design in the field of ecology are listed under oekologie.zhdk.ch.

Further information on the exhibition format and editions of past years: Website BA Design

Initiated by:
BA Design, Zurich University of the Arts

Project management:
Urs Brändle, Flurina Gradin, Corina Zuberbühler

Scenography:
Stephan Wespi

Further Information:
BA Design ZHdK

ADC Creative Weeks

During Creative Week from 7 to 12 March 2016, the ADC presented itself to the public for the first time in cooperation with the Department of Design at the Zurich University of the Arts ZHdK. This included a permanent exhibition of the submitted works, guided tours, lunch speeches and insights into benchmark campaigns, presented by clients and agency representatives. The ADC adjudication process was also conducted in public for the first time: ZHdK students, media representatives and other interested parties had the opportunity to closely follow the deliberations of the judging panels and the announcement of the prize winners. “We want to promote an exchange with our clients and the communications industry, but we also want to inspire creative young people about our industry,” says ADC Chairman Frank Bodin.
The cooperation between the Department of Design and the ADC is constantly being expanded.

www.adc.ch/de

Designathon

The Designathon is a two-day festival in which participants work in interdisciplinary teams to develop and present innovative, visionary and critical ideas for social developments. The Designathon – the result of an initiative by students from the Department of Design – was launched in 2015 with the theme “New Work – how do we shape our working lives in the future?”.
Nothing is off limits when it comes to the ideas that take shape during the two-day design marathon: from aesthetic visualizations about critical observations through to ready-made solutions for future scenarios – whether conceptual or creative in nature, graphic, audiovisual, performative or as objects standing in space.
The best works in a range of different categories are awarded. A supporting programme with workshops and panels imparts skills and provides an insight into the diversity of design. The Designathon thus creates synergies between disciplines, links national and international, connects universities with the world of work, design with business and science with the arts.

www.designathon.ch

Junior Design

ZHdK Sommeratelier Kunst & Design (ZHdK Art and Design Summer Workshops)

The art and design summer workshop offers young people aged 12 to 16 the opportunity to take part in a summer holiday taster week in various art and design practices on the Toni-Areal campus at ZHdK – from the roof terrace to the woodwork shop.

http://sommeratelier.zhdk.ch

ZHdK Samstagatelier Kunst & Design (ZHdK Art and Design Samstagatelier Workshops)

The art and design Samstagatelier workshop is aimed at young people aged 14 to 18. The courses provide vocational preparation, professional experience and practical insights into the training opportunities in art and design.

http://samstagatelier.zhdk.ch

Design open day

Auf Anfrage wird für Gruppen und Klassenverbände ab 10 Personen auch ein individueller Einblick in ausgewählte Studienvertiefungen des Departements Design angeboten (Alter 12 bis 20 Jahre).

Präsentation an Berufsinformationstagen der Oberstufe

On request, an individual insight into selected in-depth studies in the Department of Design is also available for groups and classes of ten or more (ages 12 to 20).

Presentation on career information days for secondary schools

On request, individual presentations of one or more of the Department of Design’s disciplines can also be offered (ages 15 to 20).

Contact address

Zurich University of the Arts,
Department of Design,
Junior Design,
Toni-Areal Campus, Pfingstweidstrasse 96,
P.O. Box, CH-8031 Zurich

Katrin Siegel
Email
Phone +41 43 446 32 47

Do you want to make sure you’re kept in the loop about our Junior Design offers? Then send us your address details by email.