What is the correct ethical and moral balance between doing good and having the ambition to add design qualities to the community context in which artists and designers in poor countries. Designers Pim van Baarsen from Super Local and Ellen Rouwendal and Laura Straehle from Pavilions for Okana have experience with this issue.
Van Baarsen claims designing is a matter of problem-solving, the use of creativity to make something better and not to keep filling the world with products we already have.
Ellen Rouwendal and Laura Straehle worked in Kenya on their graduation project, Pavilions for Okana. They researched how students in the poorer areas of the world can contribute something good with small-scale, architectural interventions.
Super Local
Founded by Luc van Hoeckel and Pim van Baarsen, the multidisciplinary design studio Super Local has been working on projects all over the world, especially in developing countries, since they graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven (2015). Super Local wants to develop products and services whose legitimacy prevails after their departure from a region because the local community experiences them as valuable and practical. In 2017, Super Local was a finalist in the Young Designer Award category of Dutch Design Awards.
Pavilions for Okana
With their Design-Build-Studio, Ellen Rouwendal and Ellen Straehle (TU Delft) combine architectural theory with practical experience, as a plea for students to make their contribution, however modest, to development and societal improvements in Third World countries such as Kenya.
Photo: Pavilions for Okana
Date: 21 March 2018 at 20:00 - 22:00
Admission: free
Location: Bureau Europa