September 2020

dieDAS Fellowship

Farming Materials’ Ecologies: From Uncomfortable Pasts to Responsible Futures

In September I will take part in the “dieDAS’s debut fellowship program which “(…) will take place in the form of an intensive one-week workshop, focusing on the concept of materials’ ecologies within the design and architectural practices.

Under the close direction and coaching of the dieDAS Team—led by Maurizio Montalti, Artistic Director of our inaugural program—as well as a roster of prestigious contributors, the selected fellows will work as a collective to explore and critically analyze the local context and dieDAS’s potential role within it. From regional traditions to crafts, industrial activities, and beyond, they will study the academy’s environment and then position their site-specific research within a frame that takes into account both relevant local and important global dynamics.

Espousing a critical, systemic approach to design, the 2020 Fellowship Program aims to lay the groundwork for future dieDAS talents—both literally and metaphorically—by producing a unified vision to “seed the ground” for the creation of a multicultural ecology dedicated to on-site material production. Nurtured over time, this approach will allow future generations of dieDAS fellows to harvest and harness responsibleraw products (e.g. fibers, glues/adhesives, pigments, etc.) and regenerative processes for the production of natural materials to be used in design, craft, and architecture.

By radically subverting the origin of the raw materials currently implemented within both industrial (e.g. exploitative extractions) and transformative design processes (e.g. fibers from monocultures in agro-industry), the 2020 framework will promote and accelerate the transition towards climate neutrality, allowing participants to both critically and practically reflect on inclusivity, poly-culturality, equality, and globality, as well as the democratization of the design and architectural practices, looking at them as fundamental drivers for societal change within contemporary global challenges.

Led by design-research and rooted in a combination of hands-on experimentation and thoughtful discussions, the one-week intensive program will result in the genesis of an evergrowing design platform, which dieDAS will continue building upon in years to come. Finally, the outcomes of the 2020 Fellowship will be presented and discussed with the extended dieDAS network as part of a participatory online conference, taking place at the end of the program.” dieDAS

Marzona Stiftung
Neue Saalecker Werkstätten
Design Akademie Saaleck
Artistic Director 2020: Maurizio Montalti

The other fellows:
Basse Stittgen
Talin Hazbar
Sasson Rafailov