Open Design

Announcing the deferral of »Open Design« to the summer term 2021 was a very difficult decision. We were all so much looking forward to start the program with a fantastically diverse group of 32 international students from all over the world. But only few days after the arrival of some of the students to Buenos Aires it became clear to us that we would not be able to start as expected. Borders were being closed, travel authorizations withdrawn, and flights cancelled. Both universities, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Universidad de Buenos Aires, operated in emergency presence mode and peoples’ everyday mobility everywhere became limited.

But this crisis has also highlighted once more that global challenges and complex problems cannot be solved individually and that we need innovative and future-oriented programs such as »Open Design«. Hence, we decided not only to suffer the restrictions and negative impacts of Corona, but instead start to build the Open Design community and establish collaborative international and interdisciplinary structures online.

On May 14th, 2020 we launched »Open Design - Academic Encounters Online«. In this first of subsequent monthly sessions, we wanted to demonstrate how »Open Design« operates and also take the current situation as an object of research. The two program directors Prof. Wolfgang Schäffner and Prof. Arq. Rodrigo Martin Iglesias talked on the topics of »Masks and Confinement«, followed by a discussion and exchange of experiences with the participants via Zoom. While Prof. Schäffner discussed different uses and types of face masks, cultural differences and the shift from an individual artifact towards a populational object, Prof. Martin Iglesias talked about different notions of confinement in the historical and present-day context of disease, social/economic inequality and social security. Furthermore, he addressed aspects of circulation and mobility and regional variations in terms of containment strategies and reactions based on spatial structures.

The current crisis has accelerated the implementation and acceptance of digital teaching and learning and many programs have moved completely online. Physical student and staff mobility remain, however, one of the central aspects of »Open Design«.

Yet, »Academic Encounters Online« would like to offer a framework to try out, discuss and establish blended and virtual mobility, new approaches to international cooperation and additional spaces for collaboration in the context of »Open Design«.

Proposals and contributions are welcome: info.master-open-design [​at​] hu-berlin.de