Using the Deep Mapping workshop format, we engaged with the environment in order to connect with it - in contrast to the way we usually consume landscape. We used cartographic methods borrowed from ethnographers to create a "thick" description of local aesthetic, material and ecological qualitites - dense in context, which helped us to become familiar with local spirit. Students explored the rural site and produced a physical and symbolic map using soil and plant chromatography - techniques informed by advocates of organix and biodynamic farming.

Students lived and worked together towards a common goal, gaining site-specific knowledge and skills and exploring the rural cultural landscape. Group was involved in non-hierarchical pedagogy that emphasized the role of making.

Becoming Beginners.
Design in times of post-growth

We are all Becoming Beginners.
Shifting realities, reflecting, and resetting our ways.
Ways of our approach to design and communication and connecting with the essence of life forms. 

The pace of current change translates directly into the field of design. Research and design methods are no longer applicable in addressing the challenges of the present day, which leads to reflection on the existing ways of operating in the world. The beginner's attitude is an encouragement to develop new design and research strategies that will make a real contribution to generating positive change for the benefit of people and the environment and shift the center of gravity from control to collaboration, from individualism to collectivism, and from independence to interdependence.

Project curators: Agnieszka Polkowska & Marta Wyrzykowska (Touching Points)

Project is financially supported by The Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation

Chapter 1: The Stall | Hofgut Rimpertstweiler Demeter | Bodensee

The first chapter of the project in the form of a series of design workshops was dedicated to students of the Design Faculty of the Academy of Art in Stettin. The aim of it was to establish deeper quality of relationship between each other, also with the environment as well as with objects and technologies, through contact with already existing circular structures on the Hofgut Rimpertsweiler farm, promoting original and effective practices of living and sustainable design.

Students of the Academy of Art in Stettin became wanderers exploring local genius loci. Equipped with Charlottenburgers (cloth of wanderers) we collected impressions and raw materials and created a collective Wunderkammer.

With material found on the farm, we built a market stall - a platform for what has been experienced and learned. The result is a social public space, inviting the community to exchange stories, and knowledge while pounding collected leaves and flowers into the cloth. We continue to unroll the cloth in new places. The printed fabric becomes a shelter for people who share their stories, perceptible through the preserved flowers of the particular environment. 

Supervised by Studio Œ (studio-oe.com) and Touching Points (touchingpoints.eu) 

Chapter 2: Flower Hammering workshop | Baumschule Kulturforum | Berlin

Location: Baumschule Kulturforum (baumschule-kulturforum.de)

We immersed ourselves in the creative observation of surroundings of Berlin’s Kulturforum & Tiergarten. 

Invited by: Fanny Brandauer
Neue Nationalgalerie, Atelier Le Balto, Stiftung St.Matthäus

Between Neue Nationalgalerie, St. Matthäus-Kirche, Philharmonie Berlin, Kunstgewerbemuseum, Kunstbibliothek, Kupferstichkabinett, MusikinstrumentenMuseum and Gemäldegalerie the freely accessible artistic and horticultural installation Baumschule Kulturforum was created in summer 2023 under the artistic direction of Klaus Biesenbach and atelier le balto. Little by little, green islands of young tree groves will colonise the stone-paved, open space of the Kulturforum. As new actors in the urban space, they invite visitors to linger, come together, discuss and participate. The Baumschule Kulturforum aims to sustainably improve the quality of time spent in the Kulturforum and enable a new view of a cultural quarter that was once intended as a green extension of the Tiergarten – and could become this again.

Program: Agnieszka Polkowska and Marta Wyrzykowska with students of the Academy of Art in Stettin  

Design: Students of Art Academy in Stettin: Aleksandra Brejwo, Julia Galewicz, Alicja Fijał, Michał Sietnicki, Olaf Stachurski, Dawid Fik.

Supervised by Studio Œ (studio-oe.com) and Touching Points (touchingpoints.eu) 

Photos by Peter Oliver Wolff

PORTAL - MANUBA 2022
Gdynia Design Days 2022 Collection

Manuba GDD collection is a limited series of items designed and produced, especially for the Gdynia Design Days festival. This is the seventh edition of the project.

Collection's curator: dr Agnieszka Polkowska
Designers: Anna Maria Wypiór, Paweł Wilczurak
Artist: Kamila Model

The world is undergoing dynamic changes. Old work methods are slowly becoming a thing of the past, and new ones are only looming on the horizon. This year's MANUBA collection was created around the keyword "portal" and is an attempt to answer the question: what role will design play in the nearest future? On the eve of the new chapter, we look back at the past, drawing from the tenets of modernism, which did not see the worlds of design and art as separate, but intersecting and generating new qualities. We looked for such qualities as an interdisciplinary team of designers and an artist, combining artistic research and design thinking. the traditional craft of ceramics became an ideal testing ground, especially when combined with the tools and technologies at our disposal, such as 3D printing and wireless communication protocols.

A small series of three objects, made in 30 copies each, was used by the design team to answer the question: what kind of futures are developing from the ongoing processes? The collection consists of objects that reflect the nature of three potential scenarios: analogue, hybrid and metaphysical. They show different possible contexts for design ans well as for designs themselves, fulfilling tactile, informative and aesthetic functions.
What future will you vote for with your purchasing decision?

More about the process here & here.

Rite of passage

Gdynia Design Days 2022
Design Faculty of the Academy of Art in Stettin exhibition

A performative story about the experiences of students of the Faculty of Design of the Academy of Art in Stettin. To welcome the new, we need to say goodbye to the old with care and attention. Will design helps us design out of the crisis?

We build experience from matter and spirit.
We tell a story about
what we say goodbye to and what we say hello to.
We have a courage not to know
and feel and act.
The new want to reveal itself.
Design becomes a tool for change and reflection.

We say goodbye to the old formula, the old world.
Existing design principles and methods. 
Is it possible to prepare for change?
Redesign from old world?

Curators: 
Agata Kiedrowicz, Magdalena Małachowska,
Teresa Otulak, Agnieszka Polkowska

Visual identification:
Pełnia Studio

Video shots: Michał Bachora

Participants:
Aleksandra Brejwo, Estera Broda, Magdalena Bylewska, Maria Ciarka, Magdalena Gabara, Julia Galewicz, Miłosz Jon, Oskar Kobiałka, Marianna Krajewska, Jana Lachowska, Emilia Łapko, Marta Masella, Joanna Miller, Daria Opasiak, Jan Pacyga, Michał Sietnicki, Marta Sundmann, Weronika Tabor, Marta Wilczewska, Wincenty Kwiatkowski, Daria Wróblewska, Rafał Zakrzewski, Patrycja Żyżniewska.

Follow The Object
Łódź Design Festival 2021
Design Faculty of the Academy of Art in Stettin exhibition

How arrange the world anew? Where did we make mistakes? Is it possible to design better what already exists? "Follow The Object" is an ethnographic research method that allows to look at human behavior resulting form the usage of various objects. We decided to "follow" selected phenomena and objects and, by analyzing them, take a closer look at the contemporary world. Asking questions, looking for answers, creating dialogue, a lively, active process. The aim of our activity is to redesign selected objects, but above all, the thought and design process, a debate on consumption, production and design. The selected object becomes a symbol of material culture and, at the same time, discussion about the future. 

We worked on the exhibition in the "summer school" mode, in eight teams consisting of lecturers and students of the Faculty of Design of the Academy of Art in Stettin. We worked on eight intriguing issues which, although close in meaning, have become an autonomous space for reflection: rituals of passage associated with saying goodbye to the ones that have passed away and social rituals establishing maturity, a speculum and photography as symbols of visual culture, ambiguous, rich in meaning matters - milk and coal, a mask symbolizing the changeability of identity and rebellion, and a chair - a prestigious and democratic facility at the same time.

We structured the process and together we watched how it helps, disturbs us, irritates us, facilitates our work and piles up questions. In our action, is the questions, not the answers, that are the essence. The research process, the flow of thoughts and the dialogue that we open with this exhibition and the accompanying publication.

Come and sit with us. We will be happy share our research.

Curators:
Agata Kiedrowicz & Agnieszka Polkowska
Exhibition was a part of Łódź Design Festival 2021.

Participants:
Aleksandra Brejwo, Alicja Fijał, Dawid Fik,Sara Gackowska, Patrycja Janiak, Olga Kiedrowicz-Świtalska, Małgorzata Kopczyńska, Kosmos Project (Ewa Bochen, Maciej Jelski), Marianna Krajewska, Emilia Łapko, Julia Łyżwińska, Patrycja Makarewicz-Leszczyńska,Magda Małachowska, Marta Murawska, Daria Opasiak, Natalia Rybak, Kamil Sadłocha, Anna Sienkiewicz, Milena Smyl, Olaf Stachurski, Patrycja Żyżniewska

Set design:
Olga Kiedrowicz-Świtalska
Teresa Otulak

Graphic Design:
Pełnia Studio

Based on that a speculative proposal was created, constituting the tangible effect of theoretical considerations and being a pre-implementation stage. "Food for thought” is the essential part of PhD dissertation and is a project that was created in a cooperation with the nootropic substances producer.

The starting point for the project was exploring the possibility of developing the product offer was the analysis of the digital capitalism reality, in which it is important for the individual to be able to control oneself by affecting emotional states and performance. In this project, Agnieszka proposed the use of nootropic substances as an active ingredient of food of the future, which task will be to expand human cognitive capabilities.