Design Studio 02 - 3rd class

Network of co-responsibility - (Co-)designing for emergent futures in the present

Reflection, objective:

This week we had a really interesting talk with Sergio Uruena, who is a technologist and philosopher about how we shape society through innovation and how we must use responsibility when creating and using technologies.

It was always a very important topic to me, because mostly in my practice I was dealing with social design or services which influence huge amount of people. In the begging of the year I started doing research on ethical research and ethical design. Now that in these trimesters mostly my designs - the interventions are the frames of my research it is very interesting to connect the two of them and conduct ethical research with my participants through ethically designed interventions.

There was an important point in Sergio’s talk, I will take with me:
“Focus on the quality, inclusion and transparency of the relations.” - which makes me think more responsibly also about the ‘non-human agents’ of my research, everything that can be affected by it later after engaging with my human participants and everything that is also engaged at the same time, when my human participants.

Responsibility is a keyword in my research, because it is very clear when I am engaging with younger generations and citizens of their own environment, my alternative present is aiming for a more responsible alternative than the current one.

Task and deliverable:

I talked about it with Kate on my design review, my current interventions are seemingly a bit more long-therm ones than 2 weeks. These 2 weeks of mine was all about making connection and plans with them. You can see these here on my design space.

These two weeks Angel and me met with Aqui, made a connection with The Care Lab and connected to them to Aqui as well, I had a long and amazing talk with Morgi from last year, who introduced me to I met an urbanist and politician in Hungary in person and we started organising a workshop with Chiara and her school.

Let me explain these a bit more detailed, how these amazing meetings and get-togethers shaped my peers and communities and how these will enable us to think the concept of: responsibility, care, diversity, co-creation and participation a bit further with new perspectives.

Aqui: We met Clément and Roger in their workshop in Hospitalet, we talked about our aligned ideas about how can we shapes our environments together, about inclusivity and equity in our urban areas and about how can we present different realities using them as a platform. We shared many inspiring references between each-other and came to a conclusion that we want to contribute in each-others projects and fight with the skills and approaches we can. Later on we connected them to The Care Lab and we will have a session together with them at the end of March.
The Carelab: While we were planning our intervention with Angel as well, we got in contact with The Care Lab. They are also really close to my heart since the founder studied at the same university as me, his cradle is the same and his principles about design always amazes me. So we will have a 15 minutes pitch to them about our fights and how it can connect to their Care manifesto, for further possible collaborations and possibility of change making together.
Morgi: For a long time I was planning to meet Morgi, because her work from last year and her approaches are so inspiring me and I deeply believe are amazingly beneficial for children's development. We talked about our inspirations, about how she continued her topics after MDEF, how she worked with the Montessori school here and created her own community here. We also talked about some possible further collaborations, since she is not here anymore, but she introduced me to the Montessori school of Barcelona, we can continue our projects maybe together with them. I am super grateful for her and cant wait to continue to think together.
Hungarian project: I met an amazing woman Emőke Kósa who is a Politician at a local government in Hungary, an urbanist and also the owner of the amazing Tandem which is a bookshop and coffee and responsible for local cultural events with every generations and in many cultural topics. Turned out her aim is to implement participatory planning in some ways to the local innovation processes, so we decided we will organise workshops together with the local government, the local schools (public and private) and with our town planner, connected to real projects around a school that will start to be built in April. I will share more details about it after our meetings and organising process.
(bio)Diversity workshop in urban spaces: With Angel and the help of Chiara we organised our first intervention together, with the objective of: understanding the interdependence of humans and non-human agents within the urban space, and why this diversity is crucial in building better living spaces. Using imagination and embodied hands-on design methods with [children and parents], our aim is to generate empathy and empower them to co-create inclusive futures for humans and non-humans within the spaces we inhabit. The workshop will take place in the Superilla in front of an elementary school with the kids and parents from there. You can read our workshop plan here:

I will share the results and the documentation, as well as the next steps about these in the next few week.