Biography
Daniel Späti originally studied design and worked for Bally, a global fashion brand, in his early career. In 2001, he was appointed as a lecturer in the Design Department at the Zurich School of Art and Design (HGKZ, since 2007 ZHdK). Soon afterwards, he became part of the leading team tasked with establishing the new BA Trends & Identity. Passionate about music and cultural events, Daniel has been organising concerts, club events and performances at various locations and festivals in Zurich since 2004. When Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) was founded in 2007, he began working across the creative disciplines and initiated the first international summer school, which welcomed students from all departments. In 2013, he further developed the summer school into the internationally unique semester programme “Transcultural Collaboration” and acquired seven partner universities to join. In 2017, he became head of ZHdK’s strategic initiative assigned with developing a sustainable approach to internationalisation called “Connecting Spaces Hong Kong – Zurich” (2013-2018). Based on their experiences and the established network, Daniel and his team proposed to further develop this initiative to become “Shared Campus,” a cooperation platform for international education formats, research networks and joint productions currently comprising 13 arts universities. Since 2018, Daniel is leading the Shared Campus Management Team. His expertise lies in the field of transcultural and cross-disciplinary educational formats, in creating playful yet challenging learning environments and in supporting participants from conceptualising to realising art and design projects. He has also contributed to various research projects and published on topics of events and city development.