Looking around, many of us see issues that we feel should be taken care of. It can vary from wicked problems like climate change to smaller—yet important—issues such as garbage on the streets to common courtesies on the street.

But the issue with systemic problems both large and small is that many of us notice things and do nothing about it. We tend to believe that there’s someone else who should take responsibility or that we have little power to change things.

Like the Mijeno siblings, the Filipino founders of SALt, a lamp that runs on salt and water, Reese Fernandez-Ruiz and her husband encountered an issue that they decided to tackle themselves. In 2007, Fernandez-Ruiz and a group of collaborators created an opportunity for women who were weaving scrap fabrics into rugs. Seeing that many of the women were being exploited for their labor, Fernandez-Ruiz decided to do something. She founded the social initiative and company Rags2Riches, a company that turns upcycled scrap materials into beautiful bags designed by respected designed in the Philippines and produced by artisans from some of the poorest areas of the Philippines.

In this interview I speak to Fernadnez-Ruiz,  about RIIR, and the 8 years it has taken them to get to where they are today:

Moa Dickmark: What first sparked the idea to start Rags2Riches? 

Reese Fernandez-Ruiz: Do you keep track of how many social problems you see everyday and how many of these disturb you enough to make you want to change it? We had that experience around 7 years ago when we visited one of the biggest urban poor communities in the Philippines. We met fantastic artisans (mostly women & mothers) who were weaving mats and panels. They worked so hard but got so little because they did not have access to raw materials or the market. They did not have the opportunities or tools to participate fairly in the economy so they became trapped in a system of unfair trade. When we saw this situation, we were so disturbed and thought that we should do something about it in a sustainable way—which is to build a very inclusive business that creates value for and with them.

Many of us see issues that we feel like we want to do something about on a daily basis, but going from idea to action is difficult. How did you take that step?

I completely understand this! Sometimes the problems of the world or even just our immediate community seem too big for us to solve. So we either let them be and accept them, or hustle hard to do something about them. So it was absolutely challenging! I’m not even going to downplay that. When we first saw the social problem in the first community we served, it did feel big, serious and life-altering. But what made us take the first step is the thought that we can take one step, and then another, and then another. The social problem was urgent and we knew that we had to create positive change as fast as we possibly can. But at the same time, “one step at a time” is a lot faster than no step at all.

What was the very first step you took as to start the RIIR?

The very first step in starting R2R: ENGAGE. It is tempting to make a business plan, feasibility study, or market research right away (and these will be done at some point), but without proper community engagement and building of trust, any enterprise will be built on weak foundation. As a social enterprise with an expressed intention of creating positive impact, building trust is not a nice-to-have, it is the most important foundation.

If engage is the first step, which would you say are the most important elements as to be able to do this on a deeper level and create a good foundation for a social enterprise?

Build trust, be with the communities, unlearn and really be open to learning from the communities. The usual development models and academic books do not cover what’s really happening on the ground. Be prepared to unlearn, be open and be surprised!

What do you mean with “unlearn”, and why is it so important?

We have so many things that we think we know and we stick to them and tend to impose on others, especially those we are trying to “help” or partner with. We live in a complex world and can’t put real lives in labeled boxes. If we come into a community with an open mind and the bravery to not be the “smart one”, we’ll be more effective. We won’t just create change in the community, we’ll create change in ourselves too.

Building trust is not a nice-to-have, it is the most important foundation. 

There most have been a few turning points in the history of R2R. Which ones would you say are the most important ones and why?

There are lots of turning points for sure, this journey has been made of turning points actually. I think when you are starting something different, without a set roadmap, you’ll find surprises and challenges along the way. I must say that though our journey is filled with turning points, I could identify three big ones: the time when we partnered with our first designer (Rajo Laurel) who reimagined our artisanal products and engaged with us so generously; the time when we established our community livelihood model; and the time we ventured into retail. These turning points represents the three pillars that we had to be really good at in order to build this fashion and design house that empowers community artisans: design, community engagement, and sustainable market access.

What is your definition of a social enterprise? And is this how you define R2R? 

There are so many schools of thought on the definition as it is, but it is still a relatively young concept & industry. The definition that stuck to me is that it is a scalable and sustainable solution to a social problem, using the principles of business. Our mission is consistent with this definition but we also believe that businesses (with or without the label) can do the same when they are intentional about it.

Early on, we have identified ourselves as a social enterprise because we wanted to be held accountable by ourselves, our communities, and stakeholders. We declared our social mission so that we don’t just have the moral responsibility to uphold it, we also have the public duty to do so. But at the same time, we strongly believe in the social good and social value that everyone can create when given the chance, the best practices, and even a little bit of the roadmap. We want to contribute to this bigger movement, and help make “social enterprise” an inclusive principle and not a box.

And before we end this interviews, can you please tell us a few Do’s and Don’ts in regards to socially conscious businesses?

Do’s - be authentic at all times, remember that transparency is a good thing, have a compelling WHY, and make your long-term social good vision your focal point

Don’ts - don’t get lost in the glitz and glamour of “doing good.” The results are not in there. Don’t use up your time just talking about what you do and sacrifice the time to actually doing it. And lastly, don’t give up without a fight. Awesome, world-changing things take time (no, not 3 years), a lot of effort, and grit.

During a recent trip to the Philippines, I had the great pleasure to encounter some amazing people working within the fields of social innovation and development. One of these people, Aisa Mijeno, is a female entrepreneur and engineer whose first hand experience living with an indigenous tribe in the Philippines led her to identify a serious social problem and then create a business to solve it.

Like in so many other areas of the world, there is a lack of efficient light sources in regions without electricity in the Philippines. Aisa teamed up with her brother Raphael, and together they developed SALt (Sustainable Alternative Lighting). Below, Aisa shares the story behind founding SALt, the challenges of finding the right investors, and learnings from developing a product from idea to launch.

Founder Aisa Mijeno with the SALt light

Core77: Tell us a bit about your background. What lead you to the path you are on right now?

Aisa Mijeno: I am a part-time engineering instructor and have been teaching for almost 6 years now, but before that I used to work for Greenpeace Philippines. There I learned so many thing about the effects of climate change. Ever since then I’ve been dreaming of creating something that would somehow help minimize carbon footprints, but didn’t have enough time to really ideate due to numerous campaigns I was involved in.

This one experience though, made me realize something. When I was still working for Greenpeace we made this case study.

And what was that?

A few of the common things we noticed in marginalized island communities are the staple supplies of salt, water and rice. Almost all of the household we have been stationed in consist of these common elements in their homes. I just hadn’t figured out what type of application I should create out of it, until I did a personal immersion with the tribe in the northern Philippines.

Buscalan, Kalinga, the Philippines

The foster family who let me stay in their home for almost a month is literally living on top of a mountain. These families do not have access to electricity. They use fuel-based lamps as their main source of lighting. There I learned that people had to go down the mountain and continue on their journey to the nearest town about 30km away on foot because they do not have the financial capacity to ride public transportation just to get kerosene for lamps.

And even before that, we have also studied and made observations with the living conditions, developing the correlation between geographical location, status quo and the use of fuel-based lamps, we have come up with a hypothetical conclusion that the practice of using such light sources had been passed on from generations. Thus, these people never deviated from using fuel-based lamps. The method of refilling kerosene in lamps (according to a native southwest of the Philippines) brings about emotional security despite its many cases of fire accidents caused by tipped over lamps and candles.

Why did you decide on focusing on this issue?

The link and conceptualisation of the lamp is very personal and deep because I experienced the hardship first hand. I connected the dots between salt and water and the act of filling liquid into the lamp and made an application so important it may affect the country’s economy.

These encouraged me to develop a lighting system that runs on the very basic items seen on every household—water and salt, or for the islanders—seawater.

How did you develop this idea into a product?

Ever since the realization of an application based on saltwater as the main catalyst, I have been working on it in my university lab. The influence of making it into a product actually happened after Ideaspace, a local incubator, went to our university to held a competition in which we were selected. This incubator made us realise that turning it into a product and building a startup would be the best path for our innovation and we will be able to help more people with it.

Why did you find it so important to create a light source to begin with?

There are over 7,000 island in the Philippines, most of these islands do not have access to electricity, and kerosene had become a commodity to households in marginalized communities without electricity. In places like these, all activities usually end before the sun sets and people are unproductive at night—children cannot do their homework. After going to class, these children have to help their parents earn money in the afternoon until the sun sets so the only time they could do their school work is at night.

We also wanted to decrease fire accidents by replacing kerosene and candles as the main source of lighting. We found out that kerosene lamps are dangerous to children’s health. When I was in Oriental Mindoro, most of the Mangyan kids were afflicted with lung disease and this might be a cause of kerosene lamp’s black carbon.

Now that you have developed a lamp, what sort of response do you get from people you have developed it for?

We haven’t launched the product yet. We plan to launch it before the year ends of first quarter next year but so far we are overwhelmed with positive response.

Have you been out and worked together with the people living in these sort of conditions?

We reached out to a few barangays (villages) who expressed their willingness to become one of the beneficiaries of the lamp.

What our business model looks like is we will partner with NGOs, foundations and local government units to purchase the lamp from us and distribute it to communities they are supporting.

But we also handpick communities to receive certain lamp units. That will come from the retail sale—similar to TOMS’ model of one for one. So for every lamp you buy, we give one lamp to a family who needs it.

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What was the process from idea to product?

Being a hardware startup is hard as what most people involved in product development say, and yes, it is really very challenging. One thing is you need to raise more capital.

Finding investors in the Philippines willing to take risks is very challenging.

Aisa and Raphael Mijeno at Ideaspace Manila

A couple of other startups and VCs we’ve met during our international excursion told us that we shouldn’t get anxious to set a higher value of the startup. That’s the tendency of most SEA startups compared to startups in the US and Europe.

How did you solve this little, but important, obstacle?

We were able to overcome this by really screening out willing investors who would give value to what we do. Fortunately, we found one and their contribution to the process is really very huge. They are a local manufacturer—100% Filipino owned.

It’s easy to find investors, but hard to find ones who are willing to go all the way with your startup. You have to find someone who shares the same vision, morals, intent, and someone who can contribute to really developing your product, not just contribute and give you capital and funding.

What has been your most important lesson throughout this process?

Important lesson: follow your gut instinct and never second guess yourself. Never decide on things when you are filled with emotions, sleep on it and let emotions pass. Have the grit to keep on pushing forward no matter what the hurdle is. Be optimistic at all times, but still know when to give up.

You mentioned that you were seeking a solution that minimizes the carbon footprint. Do you feel like you have reached this goal with SALt?

I guess I can say I did my best and am doing everything to make it happen. The only time I feel that I will have achieved the goal when people finally use the lamp and make it a staple item, and seeing the effects of using our product to hopefully make their lives a little better.

Is anything you would like the reader to know about SALt, the Philippines or yourself?

I guess I just want to say that there are so many remarkable and creative people in rural Philippines. Their resilience, no matter their condition in life, motivates me to overcome all hurdles. We just need to give these people the chance at life through education by providing them the basic things: the means to provide food to their family, clean water and light.

Follow SALt on Facebook, Twitter  and Instagram, or contact the SALt team directly via info@salt.ph

Projects pop-up on peoples radars in various ways. Sometimes information about a person or project comes from many different sources all at once. This was the case for Mandy Lau and her award-winning project, Reach & Match. The project helps visually impaired and autistic children develop their senses, social skills and literacy.

In 2012, Reach & Match was a Student Notable in the Social Impact category for the Core77 Design Awards. In under three years, Reach & Match is now a full-fledged product available for purchase. Core77 spoke with Mandy about bringing a product from idea to market, some of the biggest challenges for designers working in special education and what’s next for this learning tool.

Core77: Tell me a bit about the thoughts that brought you to decided on creating Reach & Match?

Mandy Lau: I have always been very interested in social design and creating effective solutions through design. For my bachelor degree in Product Engineering, I developed a few projects for people with physical limitations as well as blind and vision-impaired people. I also enjoy my other work in art therapy with children and adults with special needs. During my postgraduate research in Industrial Design, I started looking into braille literacy and blindness.

What made you decide to focus your attention on this specific subject?

I found braille to be an incredibly efficient and beautiful system for writing—it’s also an essential skill for developing blind people’s career opportunities and independence. Due to the global decline of braille literacy, I wanted to create a design which helps young blind children learn braille in an interesting way. However, through my primary and secondary research, I observed vision-impaired children often struggling with problems such as cognitive, motor and social barriers. After generating a lot of concepts, I selected a design which can empower children with special needs in a fun and friendly way. It is inclusive and creates a bridge between children with and without special needs. Through well-designed exercises, activities and games, care takers such as teachers, therapists and parents can easily use the product for children with varying abilities.

Reach & Match is now out on the market. What sort of response are you getting from the children and their caretakers?

We received very encouraging feedback from local and overseas clients—organizations, schools, pre-school centers and clinics. Most of our users are specialists such as occupational therapists, mobility instructors and educators who provide training for children. They are applying Reach & Match at their group activities and early intervention programs. Reach & Match will also be used in the degree program for Special Education at a local university. We are really excited to share its applications with future teachers!

We are delighted to know that children enjoy Reach & Match games and its tactile challenges. The children are stimulated by touching the tactile textures with their bare feet and other body parts. They learn to distinguish the difference between sounds. Children also share and communicate with their peers. The creativity and flexibility of the design is double-sided and you can create different 2D and 3D configurations to elicit a ‘wow’ effect when children play together. And I am always surprised by how blind children interpret and understand the ideas of Reach & Match by touching and hearing. You can check out our Facebook page to learn more about how children interact with the program!

To be honest, I am pretty overwhelmed by the whole journey. As a designer, I desired to turn this great idea into a product. However, once I finished the design I realized that it was only the start of the journey; I had to learn everything in order to make the idea happen.

The biggest lesson I learned was to continuously push myself out of my comfort zone. I couldn’t work inside my room as a designer anymore, I needed to go out and talk to people—clients and potential partners. I had to learn other skills to make this idea happen, such as fund-raising, production, marketing and sales. Being the sole founder is not only difficult and lonely, but discipline is also extremely important. This was the quickest way to learn new skills as I had plenty of opportunities to address changes and solve problems each day.

What has been your greatest experience when working with children?

I learned the importance of testing and understanding the real needs of my clients. I start and end the design with the users—children. I observed their problems and created and tested the prototypes for them. Then, I modified and improved the design according to their feedback. So from beginning to end, I focused on how my users responded to the product.

I love working with children. They are genuine and honest with what they think about your design, how they like it or how much they want to play. It’s truly a great experience to work with children with different needs—through this process I’ve worked with children who are blind and vision impaired, hearing impaired, autistic, or facing physical and developmental delays. Every child is unique and every child learns in their own way. It’s inspiring to see their different reactions.

What is a problem that designers should be considering when designing for childhood development right now?

I support and love the idea of inclusive play, especially for children at a young age. It would be great to have a friendly platform for them to understand the differences among their peers and learn to respect and share.

Which stage are you at with Reach & Match right now?

Reach & Match is very new to the market and I definitely need to work hard on the marketing! Also, I have been putting a lot of time and effort into editing the activity manual to help users understand usage and applications. Hopefully, users will receive the latest version very soon!

What will be the next step?

I will focus on the products in local and overseas markets. I look forward to expanding it to the mainstream market, as the design itself is for all children. I believe there’s still a long way to go and I am excited to see more children benefit from Reach & Match. I also look forward to working on my new design ideas!

Originally published on core77

With a new year, it’s time to clear out the digital clutter and make way for some new lines for inspiration. First on the list: Architecture in Development. After nurturing a passionate online community for a number of years, the founders of the site hope that Architecture in Development (AiD) can do more than just share information about sustainable development and architecture. The members behind the site are now developing workshops and launching pilot cases as a way of gathering and challenging like-minded people in a real world environment to develop new solutions for specific challenges. Core77 spoke with founding members Changfang Luo and Rob Breed about the newest phase for AiD.

What is Architecture In Development?

Rob Breed and Changfang Luo: Architecture In Development (AiD) is a global platform that aims to bring together the demand and supply in the practice of community design that emphasizes people rather than icons. AiD exists to support this new generation of architects by means of an online platform for knowledge and network resources, offline workshops and events to connect and, in the future, pilot cases to incubate real projects.

What is the backstory for why you founded Architecture In Development?

After we finished studying architecture, we started working in architecture studios. During that time we noticed the growing distance between our profession and the people using the spaces. In media, architecture was glamorized into a fashion industry with seductive images to capture attention (mainly from peer architects). And we noticed that in the world of architecture little attention was spent on the people and their relationship with architecture; everyone was busy with ‘the final selling image’ rather than the contexts, the culture and the tradition that give shape to architecture. There is hardly a voice from the people who participated in the process of making architecture; there is hardly any critique or evaluation on architecture after it’s inhabited.

We were confronting these ideas while the architecture industry was devastated by the recession. Most of our friends and colleagues lost their jobs and the future was looking bleak. We asked ourselves: How can we help our colleagues think and act differently in our daily practice?When we look beyond the glamorized architecture that impacts only the top 1%, we see many new dimensions of architecture—it’s fascinating to find out what architecture can do and what impact it can have on the needs and urgencies of various societies and communities.

We decided that we wanted to collect examples from around the world: plans and projects that are realized with or by the people, a bottom-up architecture you can say, carefully using local resources, materials and techniques with regards to local tradition, economy, culture, climate and environment.

With this idea in mind, we designed and built our online platform with the goal to crowdsource case studies and articles that reveal the relationship between people, their buildings and their contexts.

Looking at what is going on around the globe within the field of architecture, what would you say is the biggest problem right now?

The biggest problem we see, is a conflicting situation for architects (including ourselves) who have to find the balance between ‘doing good’ and ‘earning money.’ This conflict is nothing new—the renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti is often quoted as saying that architects ‘must choose between fortune and virtue.’

During a boom, the majority of architects choose to work for affluent clients; in a time of recession, such as now, there is an increasing amount of architects that choose to improve the life of underprivileged people and communities. Now comes the question and the problem: How can we help others and at the same time sustain ourselves? For the younger generation, the question is often: Shall I just get a whatever job (to earn a living) or shall I volunteer in NGOs?

To tackle this problem, we believe that we have to build up a network of resources, including financial, knowledge and human capital. This will involve various public, private and civic society stakeholders—besides designers and experts—such as the municipality, companies, NGOs and so on. The next step is to make these resources available and accessible for people who believe in a more socially relevant architecture.

Do you have any suggestions on how this can be done, and who would be suitable to take on the responsibility for creating such a network?

There is no easy answer for this question, because this is exactly our challenge! We, as AiD, would like to take this responsibility to create a network of ‘curious’ people who dare to question the status quo of architecture, and to craft an environment that is not only beautiful but also sustainable for generations to come.

It seems that the Internet and social media have already made our world more connected than ever. In our field, there are people who would like to share their available resources, such as skills, information, capital, workforce and materials, but can’t find each other in existing networks. This means that we need to reallocate the available resources and organize them into a system where supply and demand, of next generation architecture, can easily find each other.

In reality, our website already attracts the young generation of architects who are seeking a bridge to their future practice. Right now we are designing our future workshops, events and website upgrade to engage companies and various organizations who are willing to offer their complementary resources to these architects-to-be. This is not an easy step, but it is quite exciting for us to dream about the future, when we are moving away from our computers to places where we will roll up our sleeves to work within communities…

Tell us a bit more about the workshops you are planning and what you want the participants gain from them.

Nowadays there’s a proliferation of discussions, debates and calls for papers for new ways of design and planning practice. Many events are curated only for top-down players (planners, mayors, experts) within their own network. Eventually. many ideas are generated but were not put into practice. To move forward from Thinking to Doing, we need to connect various groups of people, who have shared and conflicting interests in community practice, such as the communities (users), NGOs, companies, experts and the local municipality besides the design and planning experts. We believe that this is an essential step before people are able to collaborate on real world challenges and, most importantly, to kick off real actions.

We are now working on ideas of our future workshops, with the goal to engage an active network step by step, towards project realization (a pilot case). To give you some ideas: Our first workshop in 2015 will be hosted at a start-up event venue, Crossboat at de Ceuvel—in an emerging Amsterdam neighborhood of entrepreneurs who refurbish reclaimed houseboats into homes and studios. We are thinking about kicking off with a documentary about an architect who collaborates with communities to ‘occupy’ and ‘re-use’ vacant sites and buildings, turning them into vibrant community hubs. These temporary projects weren’t recognized by the municipality and thus, demolished. The challenge for the participants is to imagine a scenario where the communities could stay and thrive and turn their temporary actions into a long-term solution. In this scenario, who do you need as partners and collaborators?

Designers and planners are trained to produce images that can sell a property. But to make sure that this final image will work as a sustainable solution for all the stakeholders it is important to innovate the process—by connecting the right people and developing a communication strategy so people with different interests can collaborate and achieve a shared solution…

What would you say is the success criteria for Architecture In Development when it comes to these workshops?

It’s about bringing people together in an attractive location, to create a relaxed, home-y atmosphere so people from all disciplines can productively discuss and work on solutions for a shared commitment. I think we have all the ingredients to make it work.

Some projects can create a surprisingly extensive ripple effect. They can inspire the creation of new projects or light a spark of curiosity within a single individual. In this case, the project that is causing the ripple effect is a group of guys in the city of Khan Younis, Gaza, who use parkour to find common ground and hope in an area of the world where that is exactly what is needed.

Vycheclav Guz
Who would ever think that one of the things you might end up seeing when walking around in Gaza is a bunch of young guys practicing parkour in the middle of the ruins. Well, if you happen to be in the city of Khan Younis, and you walk around when school is over, that is likely to happen. I had the great pleasure of interviewing one of the gents from PK Gaza, Ahmed Matar, to hear more about the organisation and their plans.

After the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the Gaza Strip back in 2005, Captain Mohamed Algakhbeer and Abdallah Enshasy created the very first parkour crew in Gaza, a crew that’s now seen as the best parkour team in the Arab world. Back then, it was just the two of them, but steadily the numbers of member in the crew have grown and now they are up to 18 official members from age 17–25.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow…

Every day after school, they practice the sport that brings them together. But compared to most people practicing parkour, or any other sort of sport, they have to deal with a rather different problem. Besides the constant threat of bombs flying around, they can never be sure if the space where they trained the day before is still going to be there for the next practice. One day there’s a wall and a house to use for practicing, the next day there might just be a big crater in the ground. But this most certainly doesn’t stop them—on the contrary, according to crew member Ahmed Matar, parkour has brought meaning to his life, and hope to the people around him.

They might not have much, but what they do have is the choice to not let anyone take their dreams and goals away from them. By practicing parkour on a daily basis and doing shows for various audiences, they spread power in a way that no outside organization or person could ever do. Their way of interacting with their surrounding brings beauty to places that normally are seen as ruins.

One of their goals is to get a safe space to practice, as well as a space where they can teach youth about the sport and the mindset that comes with it.

Creating positive change

Right now they are in Gaza, but they would like leave the country as to be able to practice with people from other areas of the world, learn as much as possible and, most importantly, let people know what is going on in their area of the world. And if they can’t leave, they wish that others might come to them.

By shedding light on things other than the suffering taking place, Gaza Parkour wants to show the outside world that by doing good and by spreading hope, you become strong and you can create positive change. The people of Gaza do not let the bombs and the guns stop them from living their lives, it does not quiet down their spirit or strength, and it doesn’t stop them from developing and growing.

Yasser Fathi Qudih

Yasser Fathi Qudih

Yasser Fathi Qudih

Spreading the message

Since I got into contact with these lovely people, there have been several interviews and photo shoots posted with them online. So if you are curious to see and read more, below you find links to the ones that I’ve come across:

– The Telegraph
– Newsweek
– BuzzFeed News
– CBS News

Thank you to Yasser Fathi Quidh and Vycheclav Guz for being such amazing photographers and for letting me use your pictures, and to Mohammed Nabeil Amer, Gaza’s only B-Boy, for stepping in as a translator!

When I first started writing for this wonderful blog, the one you are on right now, I started off by writing about co-creative processes in relation to education and learning spaces. One of the offices that contacted me in relation to these articles was STL architects, a Spanish architecture studio based in Chicago. I arranged a Skype call with the two directors of the office, Luis Collado and Jose Luis de la Fuente, and we ended up talking for over an hour as shared our previous projects, work methods, processes and personal experiences.

In this interview you will be able to read about their way of working, the strategies when entering a project and their latest project, developing a 20-year master plan expansion for Wilbur Wright College in Chicago, which started working on in the beginning ofJjune this year.

Background Info

The Wilbur Wright College is one of seven Chicago City Colleges, designed by Bertrand Goldberg architect studio back in 1986, all of which are currently undergoing a major remodeling. At the moment, the college hosts students from the age of 18 and up. It is divided into three different programs:
– Credit programs
– Continuing education
– Adult education
Course offerings range from African American Studies to Zoology.

The goal for the central authority of the Chicago City Colleges is to create a 20-year master-plan expansion, while the end goal with the expansion plan for STL is to “create spaces that promote learning.”

A 20-year master-plan expansion

STL’s mission is to create a 20-year master plan expansion for Wright College, which includes taking the university through a major transformation from the inside of the organization to the outdoor lawns. One of these changes is transforming Wright College from being one of seven city colleges—which allow the students the possibility of studying almost anything between heaven and earth—to focusing on IT, making it the IT hub of the Chicago universities.

In order to be able to handle this big change, STL had to dig their teeth into more than just the exterior and interior of the building—they had to study the existing structure of the organization to get a true understanding of how to create, and be a part of, a lasting change.

Based on previous experience, STL had prepared themselves for a rather stubborn, and difficult-to-please client, similar to the ones they had encountered in the past. But to their great surprise, that wasn’t the case this time around. The client, which in this case consists of administrators, stakeholders, students and the central authority of City Colleges, completely broke this perception by giving STL loads of encouragement and support.

The STL Process

STL has throughout the years developed their way of working. As with so many architect studios and designers it is divided into:
1) Discovery
2) Analysis
3) Design

These three phases often overlap, and vary in length depending on the span of the project at hand.

The discovery phase consists of getting an overall view of the facilities, patterns of students, teachers and the surrounding community, as well as the organization structure, and this is where they are right now.

The work on the Wright College started in June, as soon as spring term came to a close, leaving the architects without the possibility to work with one section of the client group. This made things a bit harder when it came to figuring out the students patterns in how they use the spaces inside and outside of the walls. On the other hand, having the college campus all to themselves gave STL a chance to study the building itself more closely, letting them create their own view on the school and its possibilities and problem areas

Discovery

They started of the Discovery Phase by conducting 17 interviews, of about two hours each, with people from various parts of the organization and with students. These interviews, in combination with their own research of the space, have formed the basis for the rest of the research. One of the most important parts of the Discovery Phase is to collect as much relevant data as possible without judging or making conclusions. First you learn, learn, learn from the information collected, later you digest it and start asking the crucial questions such as What, Why, When and How?

It’s when you first step away from the information and look at it without judging and concluding that you can establish a true connection with it. This, in turn, will form the basis for the development of the project.

After going throughout the information gathered in the interviews, STL developed a survey with the sole purpose of understanding how students and teachers viewed the building, how they interacted with it and how they interacted with others using the facilities. These questions were very focused in order to get focused answers in turn, making it easier to turn them into statistics and other sort of information making it easier to identify problem areas and trends and create user profiles.

Some of the problems they identified during this section of the process were:
– A nonexistent organizational chart
– The lack of a social infrastructure
– The absence of informal social environments
– A nonexistent Wright College culture [physical and virtual]

These problems all have to be addressed in their own ways to create one coherent solution

Breaking down the hierarchy

As mentioned earlier, the survey is designed so that the respondent can’t give long in-depth answers, but rather short, focused answers making it easier to get a more coherent overview over the project. The questions are more about the ‘What?’ than the ‘Why?’ and ‘How?’ By asking ‘What?’ STL want to get a greater understanding of the building, organization and campus as a machine, of the relationship between the users and the machine and the relationship between the the community at large and the machine.

In order to be able to make a true transformation of the space, STL had to work both from the bottom up, and the work their way down from the top pyramid. This could only be done by breaking down the hierarchy and subsequently developing a completely new organizational chart based on STL’s research.

Creating a Wright College culture

Creating a new culture anywhere is a tricky task. There are so many pieces that have to fall into place to make it happen, and when the space itself doesn’t lend itself to social interaction, the change is even harder to generate.

The college was designed in such a way that it is hard to find your way around, where many of the spaces look exactly the same, which ultimately stifles human connectivity and togetherness. The space feels suitable only for passing through, rather than congregating and socializing. STL set out to solve this problem by asking how the users access the campus and learning spaces, where they feel comfortable, where they naturally gather and which spaces they find inviting.

Once STL can work through this problem, they can create the sort of spaces that they hop to create and establish the sort of culture that promotes learning and strong relations between users.

The future of learning spaces according to STL

Education has been developing way, way faster then the spaces where it takes place. It has gone from being a one-way street, where knowledge was simply transferred from teachers to students, to being multidirectional. In other words, the teacher’s role has changed and is more focused on guiding and facilitating students through the avalanche of information that is to be found across various media.

STL sees learning as an experience taking place in a theater, where the faculty and students are the actors and STL is the designer of the theatre itself. The learning experience is a part of a social infrastructure for which they are designing the stage. They see the spaces becoming more dynamic in their form, creating an environment that invites students to share and interact with one another in a more open and versatile atmosphere.

They predict that the structure of learning in school and doing homework at home, might be flipped on its head, such that more and more of the learning is done at home, while the school is the space where students go to help and talk with teachers and their peers as to solve the problems they encountered at home. Learning becoming home-learning and homework becomes school-work.

The spaces should invite students to learn from one another creating a collaborative experience, while the teachers curate the process of exploration and foster the relationships created between students, at the same time as they guide the students through their exploration of individual abilities.

As for how the spaces themselves will look, only time can tell. Only when the education sector is ready for the next step of creating new spaces in collaboration with innovative architects that STL will get to explore and showcase their vision in this domain.

It’s interesting how things sometimes end up in your lap—in this case, it was a bag belonging to a friend of a friend that ended up on my kitchen table, and things developed from there. Those of you who already have read a few of my interviews from this interview series know that I have a tendency to stumble upon people and things that catch my interest. Well, the bag on my kitchen table sparked my interest and led me on a quest to find out more about the woman behind the brand. Turns out, she’s been staying in Copenhagen for a few months. Lucky me!

Read on to learn how a woman born and raised in Australia ended up starting a bag brand in Guatemala.

Core77: What inspired you to start designing?

Athena Maroulis: I’ve always loved colors, patterns and dressing up since I was a kid. My mother is an architect and both of my parents have travelled a lot and have an appreciation for art. Our house was full of paintings, art deco furniture (my dad’s obsessed), African jewelry, millinery ribbons (my great grandmother was well known hat-maker) and exotic fabrics amongst other things. I think that growing up in this kind of environment makes you conscious of shapes, colors, textures and how things are put together.

Other than that, I have been sewing since I was around 13 and learned how to make garments. From there, I placed top 10 in the state in my final year textiles and design and knew I wanted to have my own fashion business. It seems that design has been in my life from an early age.

Being exposed to items from so many different cultures most have triggered your imagination on many levels. Do you remember any particular piece that you found extra interesting?

It’s hard to pinpoint one piece specifically. I have a huge appreciation for structured lines and symmetry and I think it’s due to the art deco buffet table, drink cabinet and side board that we had in our home. However, I think my favorite thing (now and forever) has been dressing up, so I’ve probably spent countless hours fossicking through and trying on the fabulous pieces in my great grandmother’s old costume jewellery box. There are the most amazing chintzy, glitzy, rhinestone encrusted statement jewellery pieces in there. I still find them so fascinating and beautiful.

You now design and produce your own bag brand called Athinaeum. What brought this about?

After I quit my job at an advertising agency, I had been traveling for many months in South America and was heading north. I had missed my onward ticket to Spain after enjoying Carnival in Brazil. Alone in Panama, I had the flu and was at a loose end, not knowing what to do. I was thinking of heading north to the States but wanted to go through Central America. After a weird series of serendipitous events, I accidentally ended up with a plane ticket to Guatemala.

It hadn’t been part of my plan to fly there, but I changed my mind when I heard about a yoga and meditation retreat there. I decided that it was what I needed to gather my thoughts, recharge and figure out my next steps. After completing the course, which included a week of silence, I felt tranquil, healthy and inspired.

All around me were these amazing textiles and I knew I wanted to evolve them into something beautiful and functional, to be treasured by a Western market. The idea evolved and over the next eight months I developed, prototyped and produced my first collection. I’ve always known I wanted to create something wearable and I’ve always loved sewing and designing, but I had found the fast fashion cycle quite scary. It was so gratifying to find a creative outlet which is both sustainable and beautiful.

What is it with the cycle of fashion that you want to avoid? And how do you do so?

The cycle of fashion and the constant craving for newness is something that’s unfortunately programmed into society. It has been around since after World War II, when the focus shifted from long-lasting quality towards planned obsolescence (or things designed to have a short life-span). Having said that, fashion trends have evolved since clothing was invented because people’s tastes changed and evolved naturally.

We are now realizing that we do not have infinite resources. From a design and manufacturing perspective, this means that we need to go back to a system of making and buying things that will last longer and also explore how to repurpose existing materials. I think that fast fashion brands will not disappear anytime soon, but if we, as consumers, choose beautifully designed things, that are better quality we won’t have to replace things as quickly and we will keep them for longer. If we buy fewer things that last longer, we can minimize how much ends up in landfill.

Athinaeum started as I saw people repurposing these beautiful Mayan handwoven textiles into things like handbags and other accessories. Unfortunately the products were poorly made and would fall apart after a couple of wears. I really spent a lot of time and effort to find great leather craftsmen and source quality zippers so that the handbag itself would last. I now have friends who have Athinaeum handbags from the first collection released in December 2011 and they rejoice at how many bottles of wine they have carried, how many countries they accompanied them to and how they still look great and they still love wearing their bags. I also tried to create a design that was very practical yet simple so that it could be versatile and beautiful silhouette to showcase the stunning handwoven textiles. Sometimes I say that I try to make things that people will want to pass on to their children—I really hope that I can make things that are both high quality and beautiful enough that they will want to.

When developing the handbags, how was your process in regards to the craftsmen?

I worked really closely with the leather craftsmen when creating my original collection. I knew the rough styles of the bags that I wanted to make, but sometimes working with leather is really different to sewing or patternmaking with cloth, which is what I’m familiar with. There are a lot of shortcuts you can make with leather, which is great.

I really worked closely with them to develop prototypes and from there we went on and I chose different leather colors to complement each textile. Because they are indigenous Mayans, it really helps because they know how the abstract motiffs should be positioned and what is the focal point of each cloth. This really helps because it can be hard to see what’s the best part of the fabric and I trust them to cut up and trim these beautiful fabrics and get the best out of each piece. It’s still a very collaborative process and I mark up each cloth ensuring they know which parts to use for what. It’s nice to trust them because essentially they are helping me to highlight and showcase the best of each textile, kind of like framing an artwork.

What sort of relationship do you have with the women creating the Mayan fabrics that you use?

From time to time, I have the honor of meeting the women who make each textile, but there are so many textiles and so many amazing women who have put hours into each piece. They are true artists—besides skilfully weaving each textile, they select the wild color palettes and the design and embellishments. The textiles are from many different regions which I try to include in the style names of each piece so that you can google and even look up the region.

I also work closely with a few women who trade and buy the textiles and then sell them for the ladies who live in small remote communities. The Mayan women I work with are strong, kind and humble. They have taught me a lot about family, culture and the secrets behind the symbology and techniques of the weavings and why they are significant to each region.

What sort of impact would you like your business to have on the local community?

After 36 years of civil war in Guatemala, which only ended in 1996, the country has been stuck in political, social and economic disarray for many years. In some ways, the poverty of some areas of regional Guatemala has served to preserve their ancient customs and traditions. However, there is much to be done to build the country and it’s really starting to progress in many ways.

I work closely with a family-owned workshop and I ensure that they all earn a wage that ensures a good standard of living for them and their families. Aside from that, I try and do as much possible with Athinaeum in Guatemala in order to feed the profits back into this country. For instance, all of my tags and labels are made there as well. Lastly, I also have the Athinaeum re-usable cloth carry bags (made in Guatemalan mills) made with a social enterprise called Mercado Global who work to empower women in Guatemala to create their own micro-businesses.

That sounds really interesting. When it comes to the micro-businesses, is there anyone in particular that has caught your attention?

The girl who made the cloth bags is called Isabel and she worked on them with her sister. Her story is pretty amazing. She started her micro-business a couple of years back and before that she used to work in Guatemala City and back to make tortillas to sell on the street for very measly wages. She has 12 siblings and didn’t go to school past the sixth grade. She’s now able to send six of her younger siblings to school and is the leader of a women’s cooperative that sews and works on an ongoing basis with Mercado Global. She’s a really warm and sweet girl who has the heart of a lion! Her story is not uncommon though and there are plenty of inspirational artisans living in rural Guatemala.

What’s next for you?

It’s a really exciting time for me because there are so many question marks. I’ve just had my first child who is an awesome little dude. I’m living in Copenhagen and Athinaeum is based in Sydney. My partner and I are heading back to Sydney to spend a couple of months there at the end of the year to check in on things and suss out opportunities there. Afterwards, we’re going to spend a month in the Philippines to see what kind of opportunities are there for both of us. I’ve always hoped that Athinaeum would be a global adventure so let’s see what 2015 brings!

We are looking forward to see where things are heading, and what you will present to us next. But before you head off on new adventures, can you give us some Do’s and Don’ts when it comes to working with design and production in countries that are not our own?

Ha! I could write a novel on this subject. I guess I’ll firstly say that it is important to spend as much time [at a production site] as possible to get to know the people. Understand the way that they do things and make sure everybody is aware of your expectations; you must be aware of their expectations too. People who are from a third-world country that has had a lot of instability or conflict can sometimes be distrustful and used to different levels of quality to what you are used to.

Be kind and understanding of one another, but be sure not to get swindled. It’s really useful to know the language and if you don’t, ensure you have a trustworthy translator so that everything is crystal clear and it helps if they have a good ‘production vocabulary.’ You can also be super sure that you’ve been understood by clearly drawing your ideas and instructions, make hand gestures and do anything else to make sure you’re understood.

Founded by Ian Hall, Arkitrek works to the create socially and environmentally sustainable buildings in Malaysia. I have been following them for several years now, just looking for a reason to contact them other than to just say “Hi! I like what you do. Keep up the good work,” and now I have one, so here we go.

Core77: Can you give us a short outline to what Arkitrek is about?

Ian Hall: We are architects and we’re motivated use design to solve environmental problems. Problems, like resource consumption, pollution and energy use. To solve these problems usually involves working with people, so we are highly socially minded in the way that we work, but I’m a nature lover foremost and love of wild places and nature is what inspires me

What lead you to start Arkitrek?

Haha. Long story…

One thing led to another. I always knew that I did not want to follow a ‘conventional’ architecture career. After completing my Part III and getting solid commercial experience, I decided to look for alternatives and I joined an expedition with Raleigh International to Borneo. They asked me to lead a team of young volunteers to do a feasibility study for a jungle research station in Borneo. That was a dream job. I swapped designing shiny urban hotels and started work on primitive huts in the jungle. I joke that ‘the people I worked with were primitive too': gap year students mostly. The Raleigh ethos is empowering young people by giving them responsibility for delivering project work in challenging places. After some initial resistance, I embraced this philosophy.

After my Raleigh expedition in 2004, I volunteered to work for The Sabah Foundation, Raleigh’s local partner in Sabah, Borneo. The Sabah Foundation manages three rainforest conservation areas and I went on to volunteer for them as an architect, designing jungle camps, staff quarters and research facilities on and off for two years.

I funded this with contract work in London. Six months in London would fund four months in Sabah. During this time, I met the people who would become my first paying clients in Sabah. That’s how Arkitrek started.

The name, Arkitrek, was coined by my mate Andy Lo. Andy is a Londoner whose parents are from Sabah. We worked together in London and he came out to visit his family in Sabah and then joined me for a month long design and trekking stint in Sabah’s Maliau Basin Conservation Area.

I worked in the most awesome and wild and beautiful places.

What was the main foundation when you started Arkitrek?

During that time with Sabah Foundation I was very concerned with two questions:
1. Should we build anything here? [in this wild and beautiful place]
2. If we do build, what kind of building is appropriate?

A little later, when I was no longer supported by high paying London contract work a third question came into play…
3. How can I keep saying yes to designing small buildings in beautiful places for worthy clients, who can’t pay professional fees?

I think that my ‘ground pillars’ are those three questions.

And what were your answers to these questions?

Hahaha… I’m still figuring it out, but I can try to tell you roughly where I am at with the answers.

1. Should we build anything here? We ask ourselves this question with every project. In particular we ask “Is this a ‘worthy’ client/project?” or “What problem is the client themselves trying to solve?”

For example, if the client says, “I want to develop a small and spectacular part of a national park so that it is accessible to local people, so that those local people can see what treasures we have and that in the future those local people might fight to protect those treasures,” then I would say “Yes, that is a problem worth solving and a building is appropriate.”

2. If we do build, what kind of building is appropriate? This is probably the question that will take the longest to figure out…. I know that it has a lot to do with materials. Knowing how all of your building materials are produced and where they come from and who benefits down the supply chain. That’s why I love using locally produced woven bamboo for cladding panels. Using local timber is more complicated [to figure out whether you’re doing good or harm] and using steel and concrete is another even tougher question…

This question is also about energy and waste. I’ve got much more into shit than most architects should, I believe. Maybe because I like toilet humor—just ask any of my long-suffering colleagues and interns!

It’s also about design, particularly passive design and its about procurement—who builds the building and what is the architects’ relationship with them? This question is about looking good. As a student I rebelled against the ‘magazine’ aesthetic: how the prime objective of any architect seemed to be to design something that would appear in a glossy architecture magazine. Now I can see that the so-called ‘money shot’ photo of a building can help to advertise the dreams of the client and attract people to join them to help with whatever problem they are trying to solve. How the building itself is the tangible tip of an iceberg of people and skills and endeavors.

3. How can I keep saying yes to designing small buildings in beautiful places for worthy clients, who can’t pay professional fees? The answer to this question comes from my Raleigh experience. Empower young people by giving them the responsibility to deliver those projects.

The first two questions truly address whether it’s even justifiable to build in some of the spaces that you are working in. What steps you take to ensure that the project you are working on has a minimal impact on the area, while honoring its surroundings?

To ‘honor the space,’ the positioning of the building on the site is the key. You have to ask if it is appropriate on this site to have an ‘object building’, or if you should make the site the object?’

In other words, does the building dominate the site or is it an unobtrusive and pretty wallflower? The next step would be to work out what connection, physical and visual does the building need to the landscape? Finally, apply passive design principles.

Do you work with the local communities? If so, how?

I will answer two angles to this question: ‘how do we engage with local communities and how do we sustain community projects financially?’

Yes, we work with lots of local communities. It’s not easy. During my Raleigh time, in addition to the rainforest research station project, I also designed and built a community kindergarten [my first community design/build project].

We have five community projects on site at various stages now. Three are under a tourism operator, one under a corporate CSR programme and one purely under Arkitrek. None of them pay any professional fee and all of them involve students. The one under the CSR program is our recently completed Tagal Hut which was done by an Arkitrek design/build program engaging students from Malaysia, UK, Italy and India. In this case, we partnered with a very professional CSR manager for a large company. The building is only a key stage in a long programme of rural development, in this case community management of freshwater fish stocks for local consumption and sale plus domestic tourism (visitors paying to feed the fish). The key to working with communities is to either have a very credible community organisation, a good NGO/CSR partner or [be prepared for the long haul] to take on the NGO role ourself [more on the latter later].

We have also adapted and developed protocols for working with communities. I consider these as our terms of appointment, but these type of terms are not taught at architecture school. The terms are based on: clear expression of need, FPIC (free prior and informed consent) for how we will work.

When working with the community what sort of processes and methods do you use?

Again, we’re still learning but this is roughly where we are at: We have to ask, does the community really need a building or are they just looking for the next hand-out? In most cases, the community is receiving free design services and the building cost itself may be funded by outside sources. It’s easy for them to say, ‘Yes we want it’ simply because they’re not paying. It comes back to that question ‘What problem is the client [community] trying to solve?’ can a building help? With the Tagal Hut, the problem was how to take care of natural resources (fish, and by extension the river) and create lasting benefits for the community. In this case we had a credible CSR partner who was taking care of developing the human resources in the long term, so yes, a building was necessary, appropriate and potentially very beneficial.

Next we have to agree some terms. We may work for free but there may be things that we want to get out of it. Similarly the community may not pay cash but they may pay in-kind.
We run most community projects as an educational design/build program. Our students pay for Arkitrek to set up and facilitate the project and we want them to get a positive learning experience out of it. The community must help us deliver this in exchange for a design and a building.

The community may not pay cash [for design and construction] but they can provide [reciprocal] services free-of charge. If the building is to be community-owned and will help generate benefits for the community in the long term, then it is reasonable to ask them to contribute say, skilled labor and homestays and catering (for our students).

We agree to all of this in an MOU before starting. This is essential because the community [and us and our partners!] invariably try to change the terms as we go along.

The biggest challenge we have is dealing with payment for skilled labor. The Tagal Hut we agreed that nobody in the community was receiving cash for labor and we maintained a hard line on this. This project was one of our most successful in terms of community engagement and community pride and ownership of the finished building. On another project, we were inconsistent with who got paid and who did not and we failed to explain our inconsistencies. Consequently we got very little engagement.

What would you say are the most important key elements for a project to succeed?

– There has to be a clear need for a building and it has to be clear how the community will benefit from that building (and the design and construction process).
– There has to be clear and fair terms of engagement and these have to be strictly adhered to.
– The community must be continually informed (about design, materials, labour decisions etc) and give their consent.
– There must be transparency, particularly about money.

Arkitrek works a lot with natural materials, but what is your approach to sustainability when it comes to re-use of other materials than wood?

Honestly, we’ve not dealt with this question significantly but where we have I look at the re-use of materials from two points of view: re-using materials in their original shape/form and using new materials made from recycled raw material.

For an architect, I would argue that the most significant way of using materials in their original shape/form is to adapt an existing building, or where the whole building cannot be reused, at least reuse the foundation or significant elements. To do this successfully requires design, so that’s why architects can really make a difference. On the recently completed Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre, we reused all existing foundations. The structural engineer did not want to because of risk of differential movement. We asked whether we could design for differential movement? They said yes and we did. We also reclaimed and reused much of the steelwork for bear cages. The contractor told us that it would be cheaper/easier to use virgin steel. We asked why, he said due to extra labor of working with reclaimed bits and pieces. We decided to design every bit that that could be done with reclaimed steel so that it could be costed. The extra cost was tiny, proportional to the contract, the client agreed and so we did it.

Individual architects, I believe, have less control over new materials from waste because this is dependent on suppliers being able to develop new, potentially market-disruptive products. For example, we could try to influence the adoption of ‘green concrete’ that uses binders derived from industrial waste, but this will be a long and difficult battle due to the lobbying power of the Malaysian cement industry. This type of battle needs to be fought from the top down. We are grassroots, working from the bottom up. What individual architects can do, though, with a supportive client, is look for opportunities to build a demonstration project so that the top-down fighters have some evidence that what they are fighting for is practical.

If you would mention one project that has influenced you a bit extra, which one would that be, and why?

Above, I mentioned that there is one community project where Arkitrek has taken on an NGO role. This is the Bio-cultural Heritage Centre in Ulu Papar. On one hand, this project has been a disaster, but on the other hand, it has been an education from which fantastic things are coming.

It was a disaster because I did not tightly control our student design/build team. Consequently they designed and started building a building that was much bigger than they could finish in the duration of their program. Arkitrek was left holding the baby, with no more income coming from the student parents!

The other disaster was the community engagement that I mentioned above. Due to our inconsistency in payments to the community, we did not get the support from the community that we needed to get the building finished in a timely manner.

Of course no one is going to abandon a baby so we continued to plough in resources to try to get the building finished (on design/builds we not only do the design but the construction management too). Six months after the student design/build team had gone home, the building was still nowhere near finished. It would be melodramatic to say that this project might bankrupt the company, but it felt like that a times.

The final disaster was that the NGO that introduced us to the community stopped their program of training community bio-cultural researchers. We knew this would happen but we did not plan for it. The NGO left some highly skilled and motivated community members but they did not leave a credible community organization or body with whom we could work.

The fantastic thing that happened was three intern architects: Filzah, Tom and Nadhira, who rose to the challenge. They managed to get the building practically complete but more significantly, they wrote and tested a workshop program, christened Build.ca.tion, that would both create sustainable income for the build and provide on-going skills training and income for a fledgling community committee. Filzah and Nadhira are now negotiating with corporate and government sponsors and recruiting participants for Build.ca.tion programmes.

In building the Bio-cultural Heritage Centre, Arkitrek has become the NGO. We have turned the design and construction process itself, into the means of funding the building. We have retrospectively justified the raison d’etre of the building and will work with this community for at least another year, if not longer. If you ask me now whether this building was necessary at the start, I would say no. But it is now.

If you got to ask someone who’s been working in the same area of architecture as yourself, what would that question be?

What prevented you from giving up?

And lastly, let us in on some Do’s and Don’ts for people who are interested in working with these sort of projects

Do let your passion motivate you
Do surround yourself with good people
Do have a supportive partner

Don’t compromise your values
Don’t sell yourself short

Over the past few years, since I’ve started researching education, learning spaces and social education projects, my network has expanded exponentially. This was to be expected, considering how much time I’ve spent on various platforms trying to find out what is going on out there. Another thing that was expected was to see just how small the education circle really is. Everyone knows everyone in one way or another, or is just one degree removed from them.

In the beginning of my research, when I had just started my master studies at Aarhus Architecture School, I got in contact with Rosan Boschand her work at Vittra School at Telefonplan in Stockholm, Sweden. This is where I first got into contact with Jannie Jeppesen, then headmaster of Vittra Skolan, now head of of Rebel Learners.

An unexpected meeting on the subway

Rebel Learners is a new initiative created by Rektorsakademin Utveckling (RAU), who also arranges SETT, Scandinavia’s biggest education conference, and are the creators behind the podcast Skolsnack (School Chat) and Learning Narratives, a new game developed to build future learning environments.

The short version is that Rebel Learners is a course for teacher-students developed by teacher-students to upgrade and gain knowledge that they feel that they are not learning at their current institutions.

Rebel Learners came about after Fredrik Svensson, former principal and now CEO for RAU, met a former student of his on the subway in Stockholm. She told him that she was studying to become a teacher, but that she wasn’t satisfied with the education she was receiving from the university. None of her teachers were actively working outside of the university world, which left her feeling that they were lacking the sort of practical knowledge that she was going to need when she started working.

Sweden has a lot of challenges ahead: Amongst others, the country will be 40,000 teachers short of its needs by 2020; in Stockholm alone, the amount of students will increase from 60,000 to 90,000 Moreover, people who decide to study to become a teacher often are looked upon as if they only chose their field of studies due to lack of any other decision.

Instead of complaining and whining about obstacles, RAU decided to do something about it, they created Rebel Learners as a way to bring a positive and professional voice to the discussion about education as well as to support and lift teacher students, and active teachers, with the help of a vast network of professionals and partners as well as courses, seminars and other events.

Co-creating an Plan of Action

In order to be able to pinpoint what was truly needed to lift this task, RAU gathered 12 teacher-students and together they created a game plan and a draft for what was to become a week long summer camp that took place in June 2014. From here on, there will be two seminars per semester and one summer camp each year.

When working together, they identified the three main subject that the teacher-students felt were the ones of most value, and that they felt they didn’t get enough knowledge about throughout their education. These three core problems were to become the main headlines for the summer course.

1) Leadership
2) Core Values
3) Digitalization in theory and practice

The next step was to figure out how to get the knowledge they felt they were lacking and to get other teacher students involved. In order to do this, they decided to create a four-day summer camp, tackling these three core subjects as well as laying a basic action plan for the fall of 2014 and spring of 2015. The summer camp ended up comprising 60 teacher students from various parts of Sweden, four leaders and nine experts.

It was important for the teacher-students that they would get tools, methods and processes that they could use in practice, and that they were introduced to these by people who were actively using them in the classroom on a weekly basis. The dream team that made it happen:
– Ann-Marie Korling (one of Sweden’s most famous teachers) – Language and the importance of using communication as to build good relations
– Frida Monsen – How the role of the teacher has changed
– Helena Kvarnsell – Work smart
– Jonas Monsen – Normcritical pedagogy
– Karin Nygard – Programming for younger children
– Marit Sahlstrom – Web-based learning for students sitting at home
– Markus Bergenord (Digitalista) Working with pre-school children using both worlds (digital and physical)
– Niklas Svensson – Relation and reality-based learning
– Pernilla Glaser – Reflection exercises

The students were tasked with applying the three core subjects in a discussion about teacher education, schools and Rebel Learners. By the end of the week the groups had produced a large numbers of movies, articles and other material relevant to the subject.

They Are Someone?

Word about Rebel Learners is spreading like wildfire both inside and outside the borders of Sweden. As I mentioned before, Rebel Learners currently consists of 60 students and four leaders, but this will change in 2015 when 100 more students and 14 leaders will join the original 64 Rebels. Other than that, various municipalities within Sweden are looking to become a part of the organization, and a second chapter will open in the south of Sweden in order to accommodate the demand for becoming a part of Rebel Learners.

When talking to Jannie Jeppesen, Ante Runquist was taking part of a workshop in Brazil regarding the future of learning and a municipality in Canada has been showing interest in the initiative.

As for where this will lead, only time can tell; naturally, it remains to be seen what sort of impact the Rebels will have on the future of our education system, how we view teachers and what role they will have in the future. But one thing is for certain: Instead of passing the buck on a problem, going “Why doesn’t Someone do Something about that?,” they have decided to be that Someone who does Something. All we can do is support teachers and teachers students as much as we possibly can. After all, being a teacher, and a good one of the sort, is one of the most important professions in our society.

The young Danish designer Mikkel Mikkelsen first caught my attention when I saw a series of experiments he had created with wood, aluminium and acrylic/plexi. A dining table with the same honesty as the original experiment captures the lessons learned.

Ever since I first saw the experiment, I’ve enjoyed following his progress as a designer, and a few months ago, one of his latest endeavors caught my attention once again. This time around, it was due to a duck. I know it sounds a bit odd, but this small little character with a metal beak is a remarkable duck, it’s a duck you fall in love in a heartbeat, and it’s a part of a grander book project created by Aviendo Fairytale. Seeing how far Mikkel has come since the first time i saw his design, how true he has been towards himself, his design and the people he come into contact with, I figured it was about time you all got a proper introduction to his work.

Core77: How did you get into the field of design?

Mikkel Mikkelsen: Before I started in the school of architecture, I was working in construction while I was doing business school. I was working in building high-end private homes in a company where my dad was a constructing architect. So the interest for architecture started there I guess—my dad also had his own studio before this, so drawing houses has always been in my life. It was like it was meant to be.

I think after architecture school, I was looking for a way to keep working on mikkelmikkel because I was, and am not very interested in a 9-to-5 job in one of the big companies. I tried this a couple of times but I always end up feeling stuck behind a computer and very detached from the projects. I think it has something to do with the scale of the projects in the big companies. I have always preferred the smaller scale that relates more directly to the basic needs of human beings.

To me, the interaction with clients are what drives the projects. A new project is always kind of a journey where you get up close and personal with the people you work for, which I find very interesting. Half of the journey is identifying and understanding the needs and challenges in a project before solving them.

When studying architecture, what was your main drive?

It is a bit hard to say—overall I think I have always had a desire to create things. When I think back I have been building things since I was little. But I see myself as kind of a hybrid. On one side I am the pragmatic builder who is very rational and functional, but on the other hand I have a strong sense of conceptual and artistic thinking. My architecture is often grounded in “softer” humanistic and cultural aspects.

It took some time when studying to find my place—I learned the hard way, that I belong in the smaller scale of architecture. I think it also has something to do with, that I can relate better to the scale and the functions around me. I use my own life as a laboratory for my work. If I have a problem or a desire, chances are that others are feeling the same way.

When you encounter and identify a problem in your own life, how do you go about solving them?

To me it is very important why you do what you do. If there is not a good reason to do something, I will not do it. I use this way of thinking all of the time when I am working. It is a way for me to make sure that everything is there for a reason and that I am aware and can communicate why this is. That is the pragmatic side talking—I am very aware that being a human being is not always something you can make sense of and I try to follow my gut feeling as well. Even though something is right in theory, it might not feel right.

Have you figured out an overall structure for your way of working?

When I get an idea, I will often run with it. My problem is that the speed of ideas and the time it takes to develop them is very different. To begin with, I write them down or make a quick sketch. Then I will leave it to see if it sticks or if it will just fade away. If it sticks, I will make out why this is a good idea and once this is clear—if it is clear—I will start experimenting in 2D and pretty quick small models. I do a lot of thinking before doing anything. I have to select which ideas I spend my time on. This is something that takes time. An idea needs time to sink in and see if it can stand up to the test of time.

You mentioned working with the humanistic aspects, how does your work reflect this?

To me it is about trying to understand things. I need to understand a problem or need in order to solve it in a better way. Of course, it is difficult to talk about projects in a general way especially because I work in such different scales. All projects have their own “life” and framing; this is why it is so important for me to understand the “core” of the project. Human needs and desires are very much the driving force in my projects. Designing houses for clients are a 1:1 translation of the client’s desires. You can say I translate the dream of a lifestyle into a physical frame.

My bigger architectural projects, which are more conceptual, often start with the people who are going to inhabit them—I would never design something just based on form.

How do you get your head around the “core” problems and needs of the client?

It depends on the project. For example I spetd a month in Rio working with a youth favela organization to try and understand the situation and the culture of these people. This allowed me to infiltrate and observe the situation without being “colored” with historical events. My job is to observe and listen and then figure out what it actually means. Often people can not tell you directly what they want because they do not know or they are not able to articulate things, so it is important that you ask the right questions. And once you find the problems, you can start to solve them in a efficient way. I strive to solve things in a “less is more” way. I say this because I like the Idea of giving the most for the least. Prestige architecture does not interest me; quality in life does!

What sort of problems did you encounter in the favela?

The favela in itself has of course problems like every other place. However I was more focused on the positive qualities of the favelas. There is a complex social system based on interaction and support. The sense of community in these places are incredible. However the real problem is the relationship between the established city and the favela. They simply do not know how to interact, which causes mutual hate. There are a long line of historical events which has made it very difficult for the parties to communicate. Because they do not understand each other they keep on clashing. It is a very complex situation, which could be the subject of an interview in itself

So you located a problem, how did you go about finding a solution to bring to the table?

The Rio favela situation is so complex that it is hard to sum up in a few lines.

What did you end up with after spending time in the favela?

I was working a lot with mapping qualities in both the favela and the city. My project was about implementing a new way of interacting. I proposed a way of building where cooperation and respect for differences were a key element. I designed a school that would act as a “stage” for favela culture and make this accessible for the public. But it was just as much a manual for a respectful collaboration. A new way for the city to make interventions instead of the rather brutal way it is done now, which creates more tension. This is a good example of my humanistic approach followed by a very concrete design. I am not afraid to give form to my empirical work.

Back to the present—what are you working on right now?

Right now I am actually working in both fields of my studio. I am designing a renovation of a house in the countryside and another project which is a garage/atelier addition to a house. Additionally, I am working on a lighting/lamp design for Frama in Copenhagen. And I am finishing up a series of tables that I developed myself. Furthermore, I have just been hired to do a workshop in Den Skandinaviske Design Hoejskole. So small scale architecture, design and teaching. Oh, and The Duckling (Aviendo)—we are starting another one soon.

It was the duckling that caught my eye a while back. What brought you to do that project?

I was exhibiting a chair while I was studying. The couple that has Aviendo stopped and we had a talk. They like my work and now two years later it is out. Although I must say I had never imagined how much effort that project took. It is one of the hardest projects I have done. However I have learned so much doing it in so many ways.

What would you say has been the most important learning experience that you take with you from this project?

Everything other than the design aspect. The designing was a challenge but something I have done a lot of times. Everything surrounding the design work was a great experience. All of the work you do not see in the finished product. We were a large design team that had to work together and coordinate. The strategic aspects in selling your ideas and how to present them. Also the business aspect for industrial products. I have learned a lot in this project.

Before finishing this interview, would you like to give a few guiding Do’s and Don’ts to designers and youngsters considering venturing into the field of design?

– Be true to yourself, there are many ways you can use a creative education.
– We do not all have to follow the same path.
– Be realistic about the markets you venture into and study them before doing so.
– Competition is hard and something you have to take seriously.
– Be very clear on what you do and why you do it.

For more information about Mikkelsen’s various projects, follow him on Instagram or go to his website mikkelmikkel.com

Open Air Neighborhood (OAN) started off as a collaboration between KaosPilot Theis Reibke and architect Louise Heeboell, back in 2011. At first, the idea was simply to develop “Building Playgrounds” through co-creative processes with the users, as a way to develop the city itself. They applied for and received grants from both the EU and RealDania, and started working on the project. After meeting Ellen O’Gara at a conference in 2012, the project has since been a collaboration between Heeboell and O’Gara.

The main focus for OAN has always been on creating a strong connection with the users by making them a vital part of the processes. Here they share some insights into what made them decide to work together, what brought them onto the path of co-creative processes and what they have learned throughout the various projects

Core77: Let’s start off with a little bit of history about each of you.

Ellen O’Gara: Architecture seemed like an interesting thing to study because it combined books and creativity. I liked that combination and I still do. While I studied I really liked that everyone could participate in a discussion on architecture because it is something that is relevant for all. And in some ways we are all experts.

Louise Heeboell: I was both creative and good at math and physics. Good at drawing. I thought I was going to be an engineer. But I figured that the mix of engineering and being creative was being an architect. Besides from that, I had no clue, what being an architect was about. I’m happy about my choice now. Years before Open Air Neighborhood, I worked as a ‘normal’ architect. But I found that there was a conflict in the way architects work and the way the city develops. I had been looking for a way to work differently, open and with the users as a central part of the development—and still be an architect.

Louise, why was this so important to you?

Because I found that the urban space that was built as a direct result of the architects drawings had no life. (And I’d been drawing some myself, so I felt bad about it!) I was interested in finding out what created the places in the city that are filled with life and where people liked to stay.

Ellen, what brought you onto the path of co-creative processes?

Ellen: I studied at the school of architecture in Copenhagen. At the beginning of every year we went abroad for two weeks to do field work. In Sarajevo, Porto, Lisbon, … Here we were free to find something that interested us. I would walk around and talk to people. Ask them what was important to them. This would always lead to something interesting. A topic would emerge, a need, a potential. I would gather all the information I could, measurements, conversations… the rest of the year, I and all the other students would develop each our project. I find this way of working very interesting. Looking at the needs and the resources and developing a program from that. It results in some very interesting synergies and very relevant programs. It is bottom-up development.

Of course you can’t always just wander around and hope to run into something interesting when a developer wants something built but it is an approach I find very valuable. So what I mean to say is that my education has very directly led me to what I am working on today.

So, when did you two start collaborating?

Ellen: We met at a conference in august of 2012 hosted by the city. We each presented projects we had worked on for the previous months. It was clear that we had the same interests and some of the same ambitions for urban planning. The conference was about a project called Skab din By. Very interesting and experimental project by the municipality.

Louise: After that, we had a coffee and I think I asked if Ellen wanted to take part in the talk, that Open Air Neighborhood was going to give at the Think Space conference in September that year.

Ellen: Yes, and from then we started building OAN together. By January, we were working full time. Doing projects for the city and housing organizations.

During the Think Space conference you each presented a project. What were these projects about?

Ellen & Louise: We presented several projects where you could see that we had some common ideas for how to develop differently, our approach to urban planning and the process by which the city is and should be made. These ideas were about including the users in developing their own urban spaces. We were both very interested in processes where the citizens take a more central part of the development, and we both had experienced first hand that this kind of process can have some good social benefits.

What were your first projects working together in OAN?

Ellen & Louise: I think it was Gribskov Boerneby, wasn’t it? And the second part of SolvangCenteret. Gribskov was a workshop we did. It lasted a few hours and was interesting. Solvangcentret was a project that lasted about a week. It was the second phase of a project Louise did the summer before we met. Solvangcenteret was building the furniture for an abandoned mall in a social housing area together with the local kids. It was about engaging the locals in developing physical and social ‘things’ together as a whole.

Ellen: During the summer, we have renewed the courtyard of the mall, also together with the citizens. The idea for the second phase was to finish the things that had not been finished. But when we spoke with people there, we realized that that plan was not relevant anymore. So we had a talk about what else could be done. Some of the adults already hosted a weekly dinner that they thought could be more public. So the plan became to build tables, benches and a food cart so it would be easier to host the weekly dinner in the shopping center. We ended the week by doing the dinner. Some of the locals made food, kids decorated the court and we used the furniture.

After we left, the project the locals took initiative to contact the owner of the shopping center and asked for permission to use a kitchen for the dinners. This shows that the people who took part were in some ways empowered to act. To take matters into their own hands. This has been a central focus in our work

Louise: The interesting thing about that project was also that it hasn’t been troubled by vandalism, even though that area is usually has this problem. So we found that including the youth really helps to prevent vandalism. The housing association has starting including the youth as a normal part of their practice for preventing vandalism now.

Throughout the time you have been working with OAN, what have you learned about developing processes?

Ellen & Louise: There is a lot of wasted effort. The system is built to be fair and I guess it is but it is also so highly regulated that the regulations sometimes prevents good initiatives. That is quite unfortunate. Luckily the city of Copenhagen is testing new ways of developing. We’ve been following some of the projects. They have some brave attempts of doing things differently. Skab din By was an attempt from the city to test ideas.

Co-creative processes look different from project to project, but they normally have a basic overall structure. Can you tell us a bit about OAN’s basic process design?

Ellen & Louise: We’ve developed a process tool that we call Demokratisk Byudvikling—a method toolkit. This tool is based on our experience from the projects we have done during the last two years. It consists of two models: the DNA model and the 4D model. The DNA model is a tool to get an overview of the project’s ingredients and potential. This is the initial step where we determine who will be involved and what knowledge needs to be developed, and then a potential process. It’s a circular process.

Then we use the 4D model: Discover, Dream, Design, Deliver. It’s different from projects to project which ‘D’ we start with, and how many loops we take. It’s an iterative process in which we make use of the method prototyping. I think this is probably the thing that a lot of people associate us with. It is a method where you move quickly from idea to physical product. We’ve used it a lot when testing ideas. It is good to build an idea in 1:1. It forces you to be very specific and when it is there other people can see and use it. Thereby they will be able to give a more qualified response. It is also fun and a method that can be quite attractive to people who couldn’t care less about a citizen meeting. Speaking in big terms you could say that cities are prototypes. They are always being rebuilt and learn new things that can make them better.

When looking back at your various projects, which one would you say is the most successful one in terms of learning experience for OAN?

Ellen: I really like Vinterbyen. It is a project that includes a bit of everything. It started with us wondering why nobody focuses on urban life in winter time. There is so much focus on urban life during summer and by far most of the architectural renderings are of summer days. But once it gets cold and dark we hurry indoors. This lack of attention on cities during winter led us to developed the concept of Vinterbyen. We’ve gotten so much positive feedback on the project and everyone we talk to completely understands the idea. We’ve done a series of projects under the name of Vinterbyen and I like the whole process behind developing them. We saw a need; researched it; collaborated with a diverse group of partners on developing ideas; tested the ideas; and derived knowledge from them. This knowledge has been shared through lectures and articles. Each project under Vinterbyen leads to the next project. Developing the business plan is also very interesting.

Louise: I think both the Hørgården Nærgenbrugsstation and the Citylife on parking places are interesting in that manner. I think the Citylife on parking places (also called the ITS, or Intelligent Traffic Systems) has some of it all—figuring out the DNA and the creative process of the discovering, dreaming, designing and delivering. We learned a lot though the process—the interviews, the testing, more interviews. I hope it leads to a whole new way of managing parking places in Copenhagen. I also think that working with strategic planning in relation to our work has been interesting. E.g. in the work we did with the strategy of opening up the Hørgården social housing area. And Nærheden, planning a new city.

All good things come to an end, and you have decided to go in different directions. What lead to this decision?

Ellen & Louise: It seems like a good time to move on. We recently finished our process tool and with that, we feel that we tied a knot on something we wanted to explore together. That being done, we both have new directions we want to explore…

What will be you next step?

Louise: I’m starting a new company called IntraCity. I’ll work with ideas and strategies in the urban space, moving rapidly from idea to action. I teamed up with my boyfriend, actually. He’s also an architect, and a master builder. Throughout the work with Open Air Neighborhood, I’ve been very interested in the work with both strategy and innovation, and the combination in relation to the urban space. That will be my path. Working with prototyping has been so good and interesting. That will still be a central part of my work.

Ellen: My company is Platant. It is a continuation of the work that I have done in OAN but with a greater focus on a few things. I am interested in exploring how to measure the social sustainability of all these interesting projects that are going on in the public realm. And how this can lead to new ways of public/private collaborations.

Can you give me your personal Do’s and Don’ts when it comes to working with co-creative projects?

Don’t
– Don’t work with assholes! (No don’t write that.) But seriously that is a very important lesson.
– Don’t get into those development projects that want to seem like they want to listen to people, when the actually don’t. When you open up the process to people, you have to do it for real. All the way.

Do:
– Follow your instinct about people.
– Test it. You’ll get surprised. And learn so much. And you’ll find that the project suddenly jumps miles ahead. Even though it was only a prototype.
– Collaborate with people, companies and organizations who inspire you
– Share ideas
– Prototype again and again
– Document your findings
– Understand ‘idea’ as a verb!
– Be respectful to everyone. Respect their position and what they bring to the project. And be open and friendly. (It sounds very simple, but is very important)

A few months ago, I was contacted by an organization called Women Engineers Pakistan, which introduces girls to the field of engineering and technology. Just reading the name made me curious. For those of you who don’t know, I’m an architect, and I come from a family full of engineers and tech-heads. In other words, my choice of becoming an architect has never, at any point of my life, ever been questioned. I went to a technical high school in Uppsala, Sweden, always with the support of mom and dad, brothers and sister, my grandmother, aunts, uncle and most of all my wonderful grandfather. With 26 boys and 5 girls in my class, the male-to-female ratio was rather high, but my knowledge and competence was never questioned by anyone of the male gender. Not by teachers, nor by fellow students.

Hearing about an organization like this and its origins was inspiring, and it takes more then a bit of willpower and skin on the nose (Swedish expression) to start something as groundbreaking and controversial in a country where female students are told that they should reconsider their choice to study engineering and start studying something more suitable for women…

In this interview, I’ve had the great pleasure of talking directly with Ramla Quershi, the co-founder of Women Engineers Pakistan. She recently moved to the U.S. to study engineering on a full Fullbright scholarship. So even though she’s busy with the big move and getting her bearings, she set aside some time for this interview. I hope you get as inspired by reading this as I did from writing it.

Core77: Tell us a bit about the organisation and the thoughts behind it.

Ramla Quershi: The organization is a budding startup, which looks to increase participation from Pakistani women in Pakistan in engineering. Women have always been by and large in domestic and agricultural jobs in Pakistan, and their participation in science and technology has been minimal. We realize that women make over half the Pakistani population and we’re working to prevent that potential talent for technical prowess from going to waste. We’re working with young girls at high schools to encourage them towards science and math

When did you start working on getting Women Engineers Pakistan up and running?

It started with a Facebook page last August. But it’s wasn’t until six months ago that we started working as an organization.

Why did you decide on starting WEP?

Throughout my engineering degree, I felt a nagging lack of women in this field. We were often discouraged by our professors that engineering is a ‘big boy’ area. It was disheartening to realize that there weren’t many role models set out for us. So I created this organization to give women engineers a platform to represent themselves.

When the professors talked about it being a “big boy” profession, how did your fellow male students react to those sort of comments?

My fellow males knew that I was good at my studies, so they would often turn up for a group study option and ask me to explain things to them. So they had found out that the women in their class were just as good (some even better) engineers. Barring a few, many were courteous and encouraging. However, there were some ‘go make a sandwich’ sort of comments—but not many.

There must have been many ideas/incentives to make it go from an concept into reality, what were they?

Oh yes, there were. Initially it was just a Facebook page, but then it started getting attention, and I realized that I had hit a niche. We were contacted by the U.S. Embassy through the Facebook page for meeting with a NASA engineer coming to Pakistan. And i thought, ‘Oh wow, not much representation for the women in engineering crowd.’

Being contacted by the U.S. Embassy and meeting an engineer from NASA is a rather big deal, what did you talk about?

So the NASA engineer was a very encouraging lady. She told us about the unmanned mission to Mars that she had been working on. She told us about the pressing need for women to participate in engineering. We also discussed the prospects for Pakistani women engineers in future.

What was the most inspiring part of her visit for you personally?

The fact that she had a focused goal, and that she kept working on it for so long to finally achieve it.

In which sections of your life are you implementing this philosophy?

In every part of it—work, education, personal life. I’ve realized that nothing worthwhile comes easy, you have to work tirelessly to achieve it. Which is why I have started a focused approach for the growth of my organization, Women Engineers Pakistan.

What are the plans for WEP in the near future?

That we start from school levels, then college and then target workplaces. I have learned that this change that I want cannot be brought about in just a couple of months. It wil take years, maybe decades, to set back this gender gap. And we’re going one step at a time.

Do you already have partner schools that wants to implement WEP into their curriculum?

No, not yet. The schooling system in Pakistan hasn’t changed much over the years. Devising the curriculum is much easier than actually implementing it. I have received both good and bad feedback from schools in Pakistan. The Gov’t Girls High school in Lahore has been most encouraging and have shown a lot of interest in the cause of promoting science and technology. I have gone to that school a couple of times and WEP will arrange a science competition for them next Spring term. However, curriculum changes are a huge challenge.

What is the biggest challenge when it comes to the curriculum?

This curriculum was set even before my parents went to school. So the education department is hesitant in changing it now. So I need help from the international community to set up a well-rounded curriculum with a special focus on the female audience to it.

Is WEP getting any help from bigger organizations as to make this happen?

For curriculum changes? No. But we’re getting a lot of help from organizations to set up events, set up promotion desks etc. The Mehran University of Engineering & Technology is one such example. They invited us over for sessions, they invited us as a guest speaker to seminars like Opportunity Deck for Women in Engineering, they have really helped us in spreading the cause.

You just got a scholarship as to study over in the U.S., tell us a bit about this.

Yes, I got a Fulbright scholarship to the U.S. It is a fully-funded one that enables me to do my best in education and at the same time be a part of creating a better impact in society. Fulbright scholarships are not easy to get, so there are a lot of expectations associated with the grantee once he or she scores one. I realize this is a golden opportunity for me to take my initiative for women engineers to the next level, forge contacts, raise internships, meet and invite new people to promote the cause, and I am trying to make the most of it.

What will you be studying?

I will be in U.S. for two years studying Structural Engineering with a focus on Performance-based design for earthquakes and other hazards.

Who runs WEP while you’re in the US?

I was hoping you would come to this. I have recruited Campus Ambassadors in major Engineering Universities in Pakistan. The role of these ambassadors is to carry forwad my work while I’m here. They will go to government schools for girls, they will go to colleges, they will arrange conferences in universities. I make the announcement for the selected candidates next week when session starts in Pakistan. Also, supervision is undertaken by Abdul Hadee Janjua, our co-founder. Rafay Qureshi keeps important contacts such as yourself in the loop. Ms. Sidra Kaleem works in Abu Dhabi for us, and she’s already doing a phenomenal job at representation for WEP at coferences there. She is trying to build a job market for Pakistani women engineers in the UAE.

Meanwhile, I am in constant virtual contact with everybody. Google hangouts, Skype and Facebook/Twitter are important in today’s digital age.

Is there anything else you wish i come to regarding questions..? ;-)

Yes. I am calling for international help here. We need growth. We need role models. We need jobs. Women in Pakistan are extremely talented. They are intelligent entities who are willful of changing the world for better. I call for global opportunities for these people. If someone feels they can help us in the tiniest possible way, let them not stay back. From science books to science fairs, anything and everything is welcome.

Do you have any Do’s and Don’t’s for girls and ladies who want to work within the field of technology and engineering?

Do:
– Step up
– Always be in learning mode
– Women generally are better multi taskers. Put this quality to good use.
– Repeat 1–3 daily.

Don’t:
– Give up.
– Settle for just anything. The world is huge. And anything will be yours if you keep trying your best
– Be scared of math/physics. Learn things the way you like, but maths is easy once you rid yourself of the fear of it.
– Think engineering is only for boys. An engineer uses his/her mind. So can you.

What do you mean by “Repeat 1-3 daily”?

That they should step up for a new thing daily. Enginerring is an art form in a logical format. Until women start putting their ideas into it, engineering will lack the diversity it needs.

Learn morning about Women Engineers Pakistan at their website, WomenEngineers.pk, Twitter (@women_engrs_pk) and Facebook.

Cansu Akarsu is one of those people who you can’t help but notice when she enters a room: Her bubbly and positive energy more than makes up for her small stature. I met her during the INDEX: Design Awards a few years back, and have had the great pleasure of seeing her grow as a designer with her many socially conscious projects. Her résumé includes projects such as Happy Baby Carrier, Pad Back andSoap Shish. She moved from Copenhagen to Stavanger, Norway, this year and is now working at Laerdal Global Health.

Tell us a bit about your background?

Cansu Akarsu: I was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey. I studied at an American high school called Robert College in Turkey, followed by studies at Istanbul Technical University (ITU),
which lead to an exchange semester at TUDelft, Netherlands, and a year as an exchange student at Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Tech.

What led you to study design?

At the international school, I had a chance to chose courses more focused on my various interests, which gave me a chance to study and experiment with web design and graphic design. I was very lucky, my school was very good in this way. They also conduct various personality test as to help you understand where you fit on the job market, and how you can direct your studies in that direction.

If you think about your closest family and friends, have they influenced you in any way?

If you ask my mom, my ‘design genes’ came from my father’s side :). They fell in love at the university as my dad helped my mom with her technical drawing courses. So far, I am the only industrial designer in my family of engineers. What fascinates me most about design is the human aspect—that we focus more on the everyday behaviors of people than technical solutions to products.

For the last few years, you have been working with socially conscious design. How did you get started with that?

There were many small events to lead to this decision. One of them being a trip to the eastern part of Turkey that I took with my class at ITU. I had traveled a lot to different countries, but i had never visited cities outside of Istanbul, and I thought that they were going to be more or less on the same level when it came to the standards that I knew growing up. I was surprised and shocked to see the lack of resources that existed in my own country. This inspired me to see what sort of impact that I, as designer, could have on peoples’ everyday lives. I understood that I could do something to help the development of my country and the world as a whole and that was really exciting for me. This is one of the reasons why I decided to participate in OpenIDEO. Here I attended the design challenges, and it was one of the places where I found that design skills could be used to address worlds’ biggest problems.

You have been living, studying and working in many different countries so far, what have lead you to do this?

It was always a part of the plan. Travel, travel, travel!

After studying in Delft, I went to Korea for what was supposed to be one semester, but i ended up staying for two. During my time there i got in contact with INDEX, who were arranging a summer camp called YONSEI-INDEX Design To Improve Life at Yonsei University. So instead of going back to Istanbul, I entered two of my projects in their competition for the INDEX: Design Award and got on a flight to Copenhagen. I brought my portfolio and networked like crazy at the various gatherings and events arranged by INDEX during the award week. Looking back, it’s hard for me to understand how I had the courage to do it. Kigge [Hvid, CEO at INDEX] encouraged and helped me a lot. I ended up getting an internship at DesignIt that started more or less immediately, so I never left Copenhagen.

One day, in the beginning of the internship, I received an e-mail from Kigge where she introduced me to the people who later were to fund the Happy Baby Carrier project in Uganda.

Tell us a bit about your role in Happy Baby Carrier, and how it all started.

As I said, Kigge introduced me via e-mail to the people who started Happy Baby. I got the mail the day before they had to leave, so we had to meet the same day. I was about to leave the country as well and had made plans for the evening, and even though Kigge had told me absolutely nothing about what they were all about in the mail, I just knew I had to meet them. So I canceled everything and arranged for a small dinner meeting with them. It ended up going later than expected—we were sitting talking about projects, possibilities and laughing through the entire evening. By the end of the meeting, I was asked to design a brief for the project, which I presented when they came back to Copenhagen a few months later.

I didn’t really know what i was doing, but I showed them the brief, the timeline and told them about the team that I needed for the project—a researcher, a product designer, a photographer and me as project manager—and to my surprise they said Yes.

For more info about the project, check the website happybabycarrier.org

Were you done with your studies by the time you started working on the Happy Baby project?

Well, no! Originally, the idea was that I was going to do it as a graduation project, but my university back in Istanbul didn’t agree with that. That was bad for them, but really good for me, seeing as I now got to do it as a full-time job, to build a great team and to work in the field in Uganda. I believe this arrangement led to a much better process as well as a better result.

Other than the finished product and fond memories, what did you take with you from this project?

So many things were going on at the same time and seeing that the process was so intense. One of my colleagues was an anthropologist, so I learned a lot about research. I had already prepared an interview guide for the workshop and we refined it together. During the process, we had to change some questions in order to get the answers we were looking for, as well as adding a some new ones and omitting others that weren’t relevant.

We asked them to describe how they carried the baby depending on age and size, and when they answered, I would start sketching it on the board and everyone loved that, so that became a reoccurring part of the workshop. Someone drawing was a fun point that we added on during the process.

For me personally, everything was so new, living in Uganda and being a project manager, but at the same time a tried to not be Cansu anymore and just be as objective as possible. I didn’t have a lot of free time to get into the culture the first time around, but the second time we stayed for four months, which was a lot of fun!

Was there anything that surprised you with the process or the project?

Oh, this is really hard to answer… at one point in the Design To Improve Life process, there is this part called “Kill your darling,” we had to use it. We had a prototype that worked perfectly, but it was hard to produce, and since one of our criteria was that it had to be easy to replicate, it was out of the question to continue with that model. It was necessary to ditch it, but it still hurt.

Many of the things that surprised me came after the process was done and we were visiting families that were using the carrier. Seeing that they had started to use it in a way which we hadn’t intended for a problem that we hadn’t considered in the process. If we would have known, we might have designed it differently. But it works, which is the main thing.

One of the other interesting things that comes with creating a successful product is all the things that you can’t predict when you first start, such as the new patterns created within a family structure. For example, when the father uses the baby carrier, the love and attachment to their children grows, the gap between the genders get smaller, and decreases domestic abuse.

What is your next step?

I want to move on to more challenging tasks. I love the field, so i’m continuing my path within this area. I just started working at Laerdal Global Health, where my focus will be to help save the lives of both mothers and children in the days after the birth. We are going to design products and programs to train midwives to do their job in a better job, and we are focused on a low-income setting.

I learned a lot in my old job, but here I have a bigger platform, I have a greater possibility to grow and to learn more within an organization that is as big as this one.

Lastly, do you have any ‘Dos’ and ‘Don’ts’ for people who are, or who want to work in the field of socially conscious design?

They are not specific to social innovation—they are valid for every field:

Do
– Socialize with the culture you are designing for
– Get your hands dirty; prototype
– Document each step of the design process
– Bring in multiple prototypes to get comparative feedback

Don’t
– Get defensive about your idea. When asking for feedback from users, designers should not defend the idea they have presented, but be open to as much critical feedback as possible.

(Published on core77.com 17th of July 2014)

For those of you who conduct interviews with a voice recorder, you know that the transcription is typically a slow step. If you’re lucky, the interviewee speaks slowly or spends a long time thinking before answering, and the transcription process only takes two or three rounds. This was not the case when it came to Natalia Ivanova: On the contrary, the words flow as quickly from her tongue as the movements that flow from her limbs. She has a fluidity and energy in her way of thinking that comes across in everything she does.

Ivanova is the founder of Hal X, a small indoor training hall for parkour in Copenhagen, and the coordinator of especially designed courses, where parkour is a force for positive change for youths.

Originally hailing from Russia, Ivanova speaks fondly about the memories she has of jumping from garage roof to garage roof in the oppressive heat during summers back home. She remembers how fun it was to run as fast as she possibly could, in bare feet on the burning hot rooftops. Jumping over the gaps between the buildings, she knew that one misstep could mean an unpleasant tumble into rubble that might contain rusty scraps of metal, crushed glass and used needles.

Needless to say, this love for exploring urban spaces and challenging herself with her surroundings has been the defining element of through life. As a child, the hijinks and hyperactivity were just called “fun”; now it’s called “parkour,” and it has spread around the globe with the help of aficionados and YouTube like wildfire.

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However, you may not realize that—beyond the physics-defying wow factor of the sport—parkour can serve as a positive alternative to destructive social cultures. In contrast to several other street activities, the philosophy behind Parkour is not only to challenge yourself and push boundaries, but to develop the best version of yourself. You have to have a totally clear mind if you want to be able to get the most out of your practice. That means little or no alcohol, drugs or cigarettes. If you are under any kind of influence, you risk not being able to judge distances properly and having a serious accident. “Alcohol and other substances are off the table since your mind has be clear and focused for practice.”

Observers who aren’t familiar with the sport and the philosophies behind it might see nothing more than loose-limbed young folks jumping from building to building, doing double backflips and hanging from rails, which might lead one to the conclusion that these people are more than a little bit crazy. But as with any sport, parkour practitioners—known as traceurs or traceuses—must train extensively, with utmost dedication, and exercise discipline on every level of their life in order to do what they do. You will never see a traceur leave empty bottles or discarded sandwich papers smeared in mayonnaise behind—they don’t want to mess up their surroundings, their space for practice.

Ivanova shines when she talks about space and her way of perceiving it; she revels in interesting angles on buildings and cherishes spaces that we walk past everyday and never really notice, where she can practice in for hours on end. She talks about an spot high-up on a building and how she wants to figure out a way to get up there. The city is her playground, and everything from a bench to a set of walls can capture her interest.

She has managed to incorporate this passion for Parkour and the underlying principles in a rather innovative way. In addition to being the woman behind Hal X, Ivanova is also teaching parkour in collaboration with various partners as a way to prevent vandalism in schools and to help kids with autism interact with one another and the world.

Before studying at Paul Petersen’s Physical Education Institute in Copenhagen, she was a social worker who specialized in physical education, helping kids with troubled backgrounds. Back then, she couldn’t help herself from using Parkour as a tool to bring out new sides in the kids she worked with, nor has she been able to help herself from doing it in various ways since. The difference between now and then is that Ivanova has learned that the various ways she was working with the students were grounded in theories such as ‘Appreciative Inquiry’ and the ‘SOS Method.’ This discovery not only confirmed that she was on the right track, it also gave her a basis to continue her work. She knew parkour was a good way to work with kids at a level on which she could truly reach them and now she could explain and make others understand why.

After Ivanova completed her studies, she could have just gone the safe route, becoming a conventional teacher who activates kids in various ways, but instead she chose to focus on parkour and let everything revolve and develop around that.

The success of Ivanova’s various projects has spread through word of mouth to the extent that she is typically working five to ten different projects at any given time. A few of these projects are in the development phase, some are being executed, and others, such as Hal X, are regular gigs. This means that she doesn’t really have to go out and find clients, but that the clients come to her with a problem and they figure out a way to reach the goal together.

One of these projects came to her by way of a Danish insurance company that was working with schools around the country. The goal with the project was to stem the vandalism of schools, which was costing them obscene amounts of money. They were looking to address the issue by introducing a new social trend in the schools, to make it uncool to deface the school grounds, and Ivanova was tasked with figuring how to do so.

Her solution was to present parkour in such a way that the students started to interpret everything in the schoolyard as a tool for practice. She challenged the students to figure out various ways to use the benches, the corners, the stairs and other areas of the school grounds for practice. This made them perceive space in a different way and ultimately think twice about smashing bottles and burning the bleachers, because if their activity space was littered with trash or smeared in grease, they could no longer be used for training.

Every new client brings new challenges, new possibilities and new knowledge to be acquired.

PART II

(Published on core77.com 18th of July 2014)

In part one of this two-part series, we introduced Natalia Ivanova, educator and founder of the Hal X parkour training center in Copenhagen; as a passionate traceuse, or parkour practitioner, she has long incorporated physical education into her work with children. Here is a more detailed outline of her method.

Implementation

Getting the kids involved and excited about a new project is normally never an issue—they are more than happy to get out of their routines and try something new. Seeing as this is the case with most projects, the challenge is to make the project become a part of the everyday culture, to ensure that the students continue to practice after the official project is over and Natalia and her crew leave the school. Unfortunately, she has yet to come up with an answer… so No, no formula to be found here. At least not yet.

(When working with co-creative processes at various schools, my colleague Heidi and I encountered the exactly same problem. No matter what approach we tried, we never really managed to implement the way of thinking and working we used when collaborating with the students and teachers in such a way that it became a part of their everyday culture.)

Breaking Down Borders

No matter how much we try to ignore it and think or act otherwise, the fact remains that we live in a system where the gaps between the various social classes are visible to the naked eye. Just as with other sports, parkour is a means of breaking down these imagined barriers and connecting people from various cultures and social groups

Parkour transcends these social borders by creating a common ground—wall, ledge or bench—for participants.

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The Best Version of Yourself

Some call it mindfulness, others meditation, parkour practitioners just seem to call it preparation. Cleaning the soles of your shoes, moving your neck from side to side, stepping inside of yourself while warming up your joints, jumping up and down, visualizing the site and its various possibilities.

While the general public may have the impression that people who do parkour are just mad, jumping between building and doing double backflips, many people don’t realize that traceurs practice year-round. No matter how dangerous a technique might look, they have no intention of pushing themselves so far that they get hurt. Injuries are inevitable in any sport, but with practice and incremental improvement, traceurs can keep the risk to a minimum. Another thing that doesn’t mesh with their way of living is a large consumption of alcohol and other nefarious substances. The potential harm to their only required tool—their body—is far too great to justify. The point is movement, after all.

One of the things Ivanova has pointed out many times throughout the interview is that “there is always something you can do.” If you can’t jump 1m, then jump 50cm, if you can’t do that then jump 30cm and if you can’t jump at all, then train your upper body.

Moreover, the mental strength that one builds through parkour may have a positive impact on other parts of his or her life. Benefits may include: the propensity to look at situations from different angles to find a way to get from A to B; the practice of challenging yourself and pushing your limits when you feel the time is right; the habit of seeing possibilities where other see nothing; and the method of supporting and encouraging peers through struggle and in victory.

The Community

As an outsider looking in, it’s impossible not to notice—and envy—the camaraderie between people practicing parkour. The smiles, the pat on shoulder, the shouts of encouragement and kudos, the curiosity when someone does a maneuvre that others have yet have to master, and how everyone gladly supports and teaches one another. There is no talk about gender, country, culture, age, education, background, language or social layers. And if you, like myself, am curious about what they are up to, they are more then happy to show you some techniques and just or just sit down and give you an insight to what they are up to and what it’s all about.

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The Next Generation

Outsiders look at parkour and assume that the sport is driven by a distinct lack of mental stability. Looking at some of the appalling videos you can find on YouTube, I don’t blame them. Some of the jumps and maneuvers you will see can make you hold your breath and make your heart skip a beat… or five. Yet the movements continue to evolve and some of the techniques that were earth-shattering a few years back are now seen as standard inventory.

The trend of filming more and more courageous and dangerous routes is cause for concern among some of the more experienced traceurs. They are worried that the new generation will forget the principles behind the sport, that which holds the community together and drives its progress. Principles such as ‘practice makes perfect,’ ‘warming up’, ‘mental awareness,’ ‘taking things at your own pace’ and ‘supporting one another through thick and thin.’

In an effort to prevent this you can now find videos showcasing the small things that make a big difference, such as simple, progressive warm-ups and mindful training.

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Questions? Comments?

Now that you have a sense of what parkour is about, we’re curious to hear what you think…
– What sort of social problems do you you encounter in your surrounding?
– Do you think parkour could be a way to solve these problems? If so: How?
– How do you create lasting change when a project is over?
– How do you suggest we create a stronger connection and bigger understanding between parkour practitioners and the general public?

Schools kill creativity. This simple message was the point of Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk, now the most viewed of all time. Robinson challenges the way we view education in todays society, and highlights the fact that it hasn’t developed in the speed that it needs to, but is stuck in the old way of thinking.

The talk was released in 2006. And while much has changed since then (how many of you are now reading this on a smartphone or a tablet?), our schools have remained dully familiar. In the UK, things have arguably got worse, with unpopular figure Michael Gove damning progressive education as a ‘misplaced ideology’ and swinging the curriculum back towards good old traditional methods.

Four students at Royal College of Art in London have decided to do address this issue by developing a summer program where kids can enjoy thinking and learning in different ways. Project 42 is expressly intended for creative learners (ages 9–12) who really don’t fit into the framework of today’s educational institutions. The program will take place between July 28 and August 8 at the Royal College of Art. WhyProject 42? Well, according to the one the founders, Ed Tam:

The name is inspired by the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In the story, a supercomputer was tasked to find the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything. Millennia had passed and the computer came back with the answer 42. But the people soon realized that it’s going to take a much bigger, more complex computer to arrive at the question. Project 42 was set up to help young people discover the power of the question.

The aim of the weeklong course is to bring out the fearless learner within each child by encouraging them to explore a question that interests them, and by starting with their strengths and working outwards. The theme for this year’s camp is London 2050, and under four themes—fashion, food, habitat and transport—children will be able to explore potential futures for the city through drawing, cooking, sewing, animating, storytelling, making and even coding.

The entire process will be available open-source: Project 42 will be documenting and sharing all of their experiences, methods and outcomes for others to adapt and use.

True to the principles of empathic design, the project has been developed organically, in collaboration with kids, parents, teachers and current experts in the field. Besides Sir Ken Robinson’s powerful talk, the project also bears the legacy of influential educational thinkers such as John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky. Other sources of inspiration include the Independent Project, Sugata Mitra and Logan LaPlante’s talk on Hackschooling.

I will be following the project and the team from London, which means that you’ll be able to read about the project as it unfolds. You can follow it here on Core77 and on Project 42’s own blog.

You meet many people when you are out and about in the world. During one of my trips to Paris I ran into Kenza. She’s young, she’s energetic and her smile is infectious. We started talking in a bar a about fashion and life and passion for our respective trades. She told me she was a photographer living in Bali. I looked at her and thought to myself: “Yeah, yeah, she’s just another person with a camera who calls herself a photographer because it sounds good…!”
But how wrong I was. And I’m more then happy to admit it. This girl is good, as in GOOD…!

Moa: Tell us a bit about your background

Kenza:My parents are french (Avignon and Normandie ) but I have mexican and Moroccan blood from my biological father. I grew up in Bali and left the south of france ‘Avignon’ when I was 7years old. It was because of my parents business we decided to move to Bali.

You started taking pictures at a very young age, where did this interest arrive from?

At the age of 14 i saved up money to buy a reflex camera to be able to capture moments of my lifestyle. I’ve always been interested in everything related to art since I was a kid but when i started to understand the freedom of having a camera in the hand and creating scenarios, photography was it

How would you say that your love to photography has developed since then?

By working with other artist, capturing any beauty, getting inspired by places I’ve been or moments in my life Ive been trough … Imagination never stops but keep growing the more I shoot the more I learn new little things

How is it to be a young female photographer in the fashion industry?

Well, at the beginning it wasn’t to easy. I must say the agency wouldn’t let me test their models to experiment or make up artists for that mater, and stylist didn’t trust me. So I had to fight to work with them, then slowly they started recognize my work and to agree on doing projects together. Now I don’t see any difference between me and the ones who’s been in the business longer.

How have you learned the tricks of the trade? Have you had any support from an older and more experienced photographer?

Well I am very far from knowing all the tricks to be honest. I’ve been learning by reading books and online tutorials and experimenting by my own. I did an internship with a photographer, but that was a long time ago. At the moment I have lots of support from this photographer that teach me heaps of stuff, I would actually call him my ”professor”, and I’m his muse. We both are really passionate about what we do. We have very different eyes and styles, but we get really inspired by each other. He have all the technical knowledge and I bring the art touch. That’s why we learn from one another.

When working, what inspires you the most?

It really depends… Everything can inspires me. For example when I work with a wonderful team that gives good vibes to the shoot, but even a negative vibe with a energy can inspire me. But also how people act or react to something, the light, the location I’m working, the mood I am in and the connection I have with the model is also very important… I always try to be very close to her rather then using her like an object. That way I get the most of her and can capture something more deep and powerful.
I’m usually inspired before I’m on set. Thats an everyday inspiration from movies or situation I put my self in, relationships I have with people by partying. Dreams is also one of my biggest inspiration.I write everything down and think of how I could make all this emotions into an concept, a photo shoot.

What would you say is the hardest part of being a freelance photographer?

You have to be organised when it comes to everything. Depending on the low and high season I have to be aware my money situation, because I don’t get an every month fix salary… There is no company or agencies that represent me so I have to promote my self constantly not to be forgotten by shooting and make people talk about me as much as possible. You to be active and never stop creating & building artistic projects etc.. I am completely independent so there’s good and negative sides of it.

Where would you say you get most of your costumers from? And is there a difference when it comes to where you get most projects and where you get most money?

Mainly from word of mouth. There’s also the publications in Magazines (editorial) that helps, of course interviews, but also Instagram and Facebook. Usually its brands that get in contacts with me to photograph their new campaign/lookbook. It doesn’t make a difference where they hear about me when it comes to who pays the most. There’s really big companys who have found me via Instagram and low budget companies that might have seen my work in a magazine. It doesn’t really make a big difference.

Do you do other photo shoots other of fashion?

Well I am still in this ”experimenting” phase of my life where I’m trying to find myself and my style… I also do landscape and lifestyle. I recently met a war photographer, and I would love to experiment with this as well, but what I mainly love is fashion and beauty. Thats what I love the most because its like having a white piece of paper and a pen and draw what you have in mind. Choosing a girl that is right for the concept, creating an ambiance and an attitude. I went with my ”professor” on an excursion a week ago to climb a sulfur volcano at 2 in the morning in Jawa to take images and do an exhibition, capturing shooting stars, workers, and lava fields. It was quiet magical and we are very satisfied with the result of the images.

When and where are you expecting to be having this exhibition?

In Hong Kong hopefully before july but i can’t say more on the subject before its 100% ready.

Before ending this interview, could you tell us about one of your favourite shoots and why it left such an imprint on you?

I could seriously give you 100 of examples…Haha…
This is a hard one because I am very emotionally attached to almost every single of my shoots. But I could give you few example of ones that has touch me the most. I’ve loved Frida Kahlo since I studied her when I was in school. So I decided to make a shoot with her as the main inspiration. It wasn’t easy, the stylist and make up artist is a very difficult woman hard to work with that doesn’t go along with anyone, and the model had the put herself in Frida’s skin. The pictures turned out very good and really created the emotion I had in mind. Its probabably one of my favourite shoots.
There’s also another one that I really love. It was in studio and I did it with my ex boyfriend who’s an hairdresser. The concept was very dark, we had to drop candle wax on a female model, it was late at night and very hard to get the light right, but the entire the team was working hard and the images turned out insane! Every time I look at those photos it bring me back to that beautiful obscure night we all had.
I also really like this other shoot I did with a russian model. It was only her and I, and we did everything together in terms of make up and wardrobe. We were alone in this villa and we just hanged out and took photos. I really got to know her in a short time and that is what made the pictures look so good and you can see that there’s true emotion behind it.

Location: Copenhagen, Denmark

About one year ago, I was giving a talk to students who were about to graduate from the various design schools in Copenhagen. After I finished, I leaned back in a chair located rather close to the door (and close to the drinks and snack section…) when I caught myself staring at a bag. It captivated me to the extent that everything around me disappeared, and the only thing left was the bag and me. Once I snapped out of it, I went up to the person holding the bag as to ask him where he had bought it. To my great despair, it turned out he had made it himself, and he was holding the only sample. The Man with The Bag turned out not just to have a great eye for design, but to also have a great and intricate mind, and his name is Brian Frandsen

Core77: Tell us a bit about your background. How did you end up in the field of design?

Brian Frandsen: I was not supposed to study design to begin with, I never thought I would do anything like this. It sort of just happened. I’ve always been a bit of a book nerd— I live very much in my head. I’ve always loved school, mathematics and humanistic studies, so I thought I was going to study Danish, rhetoric, philosophy, political science or something along that line.

After high school, I was lucky enough to get a job in quality control for a Danish mainstream clothing brand at their office in Hong Kong. I spent half a year there, with my partner at that time, and while I was there it hit me how disgusting the fashion industry really was.

My boss would find something she liked, draw it in Illustrator and send it off to the factory in China. After we got the sample and established the price of the product, they took away a few details to make it cheaper to produce and sent it back to the factory. The entire fashion and design mechanism was without feeling, without heart. I felt offended by the way it worked, yet at the same time it fascinated me.

I lived in Hong Kong for a while—just as with the fashion industry, I had contradicting feelings for the city itself. I loved it and hated it at the very same time. It’s the most constructed place I have ever been. It feels like nothing in Hong Kong is natural, everything is man-made, everything has its place, and all of the buildings are built in a specific way. But at the same time, when you walk around and truly look you can see how the traditional Chinese culture is creating its own space in the cracks of the perfect façade. It grows like weed out of the asphalt. These perfect glass buildings and the uncontrollable growth that is happening in between theses buildings ignited something within me that changed me on a fundamental level.

After I got back, I still thought I was going to go to Copenhagen to study and get a serious degree in one of the rather academic fields. I don’t know if they have it in other countries as well but in Denmark, universities have something they called Open House where you can visit the uni’s and check out all of the courses available. I visited all of the ones I could think of, but in the evening, only Copenhagen design school was open so I went there just to see what they had to offer, and I was hooked. There was something about it, the same thing that had fascinated me with China, that was man-made and then the other side, the one that you could not control. That you should put yourself in the space between what the logic tells you and what your intuition tells you. That’s where I wanted to be.

Another important factor in my decision to go to design school was a reform that resulted in a more theory-driven education. After that I went home, did some research and found out that there is only two design schools in Denmark: The Design School of Copenhagen and Design School Kolding. I visited Kolding and realized it was time for me to choose between a life (in Copenhagen) or a superior (to me, at least) education (in Kolding). I went for the latter. I applied the same year, and I actually didn’t expect to get in that same year, but to my great surprise I did. So that was how I got into design.

What got you through these five years at Design School Kolding?

[Laughing] It’s been six or seven years now, as I’ve been working there as well… Not one single month have passed since I started that I haven’t thought “What am I doing here? I’m not a designer. I should stop this and start studying at the university!”

I’ve had a really hard time fitting into the idea of what it is to be a designer. I started with industrial design and it is a rather square way of thinking. You are supposed to design this-or-that sort of product, and to do it in this-or-that sort of way. I have a tendency to think on a more abstract level. As I said, I live very much in my head. This has been a hard thing to handle and has created a rather difficult relationship between some of my teachers and myself. I’ve tried to explain my way of thinking, the philosophy behind my projects and they have wanted to See something. There’s this constant struggle going on within me on so many levels. Just to get out of my own head and start making things with my hands is a long process, but when I finally get to the stage when I start creating, then the ideas just come flooding out, and it’s hard to stop creating.

After you finished your studies, you have been working in various areas of the design industry, how do you feel about it today?

I’m really trying to love it, and I’m trying to do so in the same way as you love a child who doesn’t know any better. I’ve worked on a development project at Design School Kolding where we were trying to implement sustainable processes and thinking in small- and medium-sized businesses. One of the reasons why they are not using the solutions available for a more sustainable production is because they can’t wrap their mind around the consequences. It’s such a big and abstract phenomenon—questions such as “What is responsible?”, “What is sustainable?” and ” What can we allow ourselves as a product producing industry?” can be truly hard to answer if you don’t have the right tools to do so.

One of my current preoccupations is how we can use design and design thinking to strike a balance between the analytical and intuitive processes to become a new and creative language and a new way of working when creating products. The big discussion going on right now focuses on whether people have a tendency to either blame the industry or blame the humans for everything that is going wrong with the world. Some of us seem to put ourselves on a pedestal and think of ourselves as if we are above nature, others seem to want us to stop existing since we are of greater danger then benefit to the environment. I don’t believe that either is the case.

The idea that we should stop producing things and stop buying things—in order to more or less stop existing in the physical realm and just become brains—is alien to me. It doesn’t get us anywhere. One of the solutions to the problem is to find a balance between being a rational being and a sensing being that exists in this world, who creates things that improve this world. Our ability to reason and imagine a future helps us develop, but we live here and now through our senses and our bodies.

To reach this mindset, we need to change our way of thinking of ourselves on a fundamental and human level. Thinking about how this is going to happen truly occupies me.

Right now you are working on a new handbag collection, how does this align with your line of thinking?

To be completely honest, I’m struggling with it. But at the same time, I do have this need to create, create handbags, art and products. I don’t want to create “just another thing,” I want to create something that fulfills a need, both in a functional and emotional ways. You can say that it’s my way of giving back.

I create bags that I believe people are going to buy because they know they are going to love it and keep it for many, many years, and they know they are going to have a relation to this bag. I don’t want to create something people by because of trends. If you as a designer go for creating the best and the most environmentally conscious product that also is the most beautiful and has the biggest liveability factor on the market, then you have the right to be here. If your only concern, when designing, is to sell as many things as possible without taking into consideration how this impacts people and the world, then I don’t think you have any right to be putting things out there.

Can you give us examples of designers who you think definitely have the right to be here?

It’s hard to truly see a business or a designer’s way of working and designing unless they are completely transparent, and there are very few who have reached that level. But on a personal level you can, to some extent, go after your gut feeling by asking yourself if it is a product you believe you are going to love and use for a really long time. If you truly believe that this is the case, then that is a step in the right direction. By choosing your purchases this way, you forces the makers and companies to emphasize their focus on quality and durability.

There is one fashion designer whom I have a great deal of respect for, and although I don’t know him personally, he is the only one who I trust 100%: Bruno Pieters, the man behind Honest By. He used to be the Creative Director for one of the high-end brands, and got the same sort of feeling for the industry as myself. He quit and spent a year traveling around visiting various producers as to see which one of them “had clean flour in their bag” [a Danish expression for honesty], which ones who were willing to open up their books and their manufacturing procedures and tell about the origin of their raw materials. After this, he designed a collection, which is sold such that a customer can find out absolutely everything about the various garments—from how much the seamstresses are paid to how much the safety pin holding of the tag costs—on the website where it is sold. Not that anyone reads everything, but the knowledge that it is there gives you a sensation of trust and understudying of the philosophy that drives him. This sort of absolute transparency is beautiful.

I believe that this is something we will see more of in the future. And I believe that this way of thinking is one of the things that is going to be a part of creating this change in mindset that I spoke about earlier.

In a world where it’s hard to have faith in anyone as long as there is money involved, I believe that one of the ways to create a bigger trust is to open up completely. And as far as I know, Bruno Pieters is one of the only designers to have done so to such an extent.

Is this way of being completely transparent something that you are aiming for when designing?

Absolutely, and it’s rather easy for me, seeing that my production flow is very small compared to other businesses. There are some parts that are rather hard for me to get all of the information about, but I try to gather as much information about the various parts of the objects as I possibly can. It is my goal to have a product and production flow that is 100% transparent. Every time I buy a material, I try to take it one step further and get as much information about it as possible. You can say that I’m building my own little transparency library.

You work a lot with leather, how do you feel about this?

It’s difficult, since there isn’t really any responsible production of leather that produces leather of high enough standard. I only use naturally tanned leather, which means that there’s no use of chrome or other chemicals in the tanning process. This is more healthy for the workers, as well as for the users in the long run.

Where do you find this sort of leather?

I believe it’s called full-grain leather in English, but I’m not quite sure. You can find it in more or less any store that sells leather. It’s normally the thicker and harder version, seeing that the soft and very flexible ones are the ones that have been treated with chrome and other chemicals as to make it softer and create a specific surface. I really like working with the naturally tanned leather, which just becomes better and more beautiful with age. One of the problems with working with leather from animals that have lived a good life in the outdoors is that their skin has been damaged by insect bites and scars from fence cuts. It makes it a bit less attractive to the costumers, but I try to design my products such that the flaws become a part of the appeal.

I also try to dissect the design so that the various parts can be easily separated for easy recycling—trimmings, metal parts and main structure all by themselves. Right now I’m designing a bag where the main bag, made of leather, is rather neutral and simple in its expression, while the inner bag is made from textile and is the part that you change with time. This way you can make it more personal and keep it for longer, since the design takes the seasonal change of fashion and the longevity and properties of the leather is into account in its construction.

Based on your products, it’s easy to see how your philosophies guide you when you design. What sort of reactions do you normally get when it comes to your products?

I am happy that you can see the influence of my philosophy in my designs. To be honest, I don’t think that much about it when I design. The philosophy is created in a dialectic relationship between what I do, and I believe this to be the way we in reality experience our life and the world around us. Never stop creating and never stop reflecting on your creations.

Usually people are fascinated by my products, which go to the edge of the expected without becoming statements—they always have a twist or a hidden story. People find both comfort in the classical foundation I build my designs upon and excitement in the unexpected twists and details.

You also explore other sides of design beyond bags. Tell us a bit about that.

Other then the basic design projects, I work as an innovation consultant where I primarily work with organization development, and secondly with product development. It refers to the idea of the new way of existing in this society and how to create relations and business in a more conscious way. It builds on some design principles of balancing an intuitive and an analytic way of thinking when creating. Design encompasses grand spectrum of methods on how to incorporate this in processes, and these processes can be used in more or less any field, whether it is strategies, lean product development or human resources.

Now I’m consulting various schools and NGO’s on how they can incorporate design thinking in their way of working, on a process and strategic level and in product development.

When working as a consultant, do you have a specific way of working, or does it depend on the organization?

Hmm… That’s a hard one. The strategy that I use as a base is the “design stairs” (developed by Danish Design Center). It’s easy to use in the way that you start up by asking: Do you need help developing a product, a process, a strategy or development of the organization? And I use a lot of time asking “Wh-” questions—What, Why, Where, and in the end How…

I’ve been reading a lot of Roger Martin‘s articles and books; you can say he’s my hero. He used to be the principal of the Rotman School of Business in Toronto, which is one of the most prestigious business schools fo North America. He says something along the lines with “Future business leaders should not understand designer, they should become designers.” He defines the leader as the one who balances the analytical processes and the intuitive processes in a business. His theoretical basis is something that I use when talking to the analytical thinkers, who are the majority of the people you encounter in the businesses of today. I try to convince them to start working more with their human side, their intuition and start understanding that their feelings also give something important to their work. Also, that they can trust these human sides as to make decisions on previous experiences, not just data.

I also make an effort to get clients to understand that if they want to develop anything in their business, they have to have the courage to be interrupted and let the unexpected enter. Normally this is really hard for people, since they want to have total control over everything they do, every minute of the day, so asking them to listen to their intuition is an interruption in itself. To listen to your gut feeling takes a lot of courage for people who have ignored it for such a long time.

So what is the third thing you do?

It’s art, and in reality this is my biggest creative outlet, where I can work more closely with my own essence, aesthetics, materials and storytelling. It feels fantastic.

How do you bring in your thoughts and theories into your art?

Everything is connected. In order to become more sustainable as individuals, I believe that we have to not only be human, and use our humanity when we are at home with friends and family, but that we are first and foremost humans and we have the possibility and responsibility to take this into consideration in our day-to-day life. We are a part of everything, we are connected to everything. We can never put ourselves above this, the only thing we can do is to take part of it and be a part of it in such a way that the footprints we inevitable leave behind is as positive a mark as possible.

The key to act in the transition between the social paradigm we are living in now, and a more flourishing future, is not to tear everything down and start from scratch but to continue building on the sections that actually work. I believe that the thinking and acting within design will have a major influence on our ability to do so.

Although my art is very personal, its also a study in how you act as a human being, how we interpret the world and how we connect to and interact with people around us.

We walk around in this world without really seeing it. We are so used to our brain picking up images and processing these images that we take them for granted. Since we are so used to this, since we take it for granted, many people walk around as zombies, without ever questioning or contemplating over what is going on around us. We are rarely aware of all the impressions we get, and why we understand them as we do. You can say that my art is creating deception. I like creating pieces that make you believe you see one thing, but in reality it might be something completely different. I create art that deceives the brain in such a way that it makes it hard for the brain to connect what it is seeing into something that makes sense to it creating a sort of flickering reaction. We can see it, we can’t see it…..

I want to create art that makes the brain question what our minds perceive as reality and what really is reality, and also makes us question everything we see around is in our day to day life. Nothing is what it seems, and many have to be reminded of just that as well when it comes to our day-to-day life. This is something that has been a part of the art world for as long as there has been art, I just try to make it in a more obvious manner.

The biggest piece I’ve made so far was for the Milan Fair in 2012 in collaboration with Ege-Carpets. It was a self-portrait created by 125 carpets stacked on top of one another in a standing position. For this project I’ve made a 3D scan of my own face, and cut it out in such a way that you could “walk inside my face.” And on top of these rugs there was a 2D print of my face, so when you glanced at it your brain would perceive it as a 2D picture of me, but then while moving around it your brain would start reacting to the fact that something wasn’t the way it first thought it was. Your brain will flicker between the perceived reality and the real reality, and your mind will find it hard to connect the two perceptions into one. The brain wants the sculpture to go outwards like the 2D picture, while the negative form of my face was showing in the 3D cutouts.

I loved this project, specially watching people react to the piece, to see how they first just walked passed it and then come back to look at it more closely seeing that they couldn’t make sense of what they saw at first glance. It was like giving the viewer a sort of break from only relying on their perception. It was a mental interruption.

For a long time, we have talked about making everything around us as smooth and effective as possible, but this isn’t what we need as people. We need some sort of resistance as to not lean back and only rely on our perception and start seeing the world for what it really is.

We have been talking a lot about designers, how would you describe what it is to be a designer?

I have a tendency to make the designer sound like some sort of God, and that is not my intention, far from it. But I do believe that a designer has a sort of courage when heading into a new challenge. A good designer knows how to balance divergent and convergent processes. Non-designers have this ability too, but they’ve been taught not to look at the world this way. I believe the approach of the designers, the methods and way of approaching challenges, is more accurate to how the human being is designed by nature to solve the puzzles of life.

There are two steps of courage that characterize a good designer:
1.) The courage to take two steps back and observe the world as if she isn’t a part of it, open up and reflect on what she perceives as an empty room that she then fills to the brim with information.
2.) The courage to make the hard choices, and use an analytical approach as to decided what to keep in the room and what to get rid of. Most people don’t like taking these sort of decisions, they prefer to lean back, let go of their responsibility and let someone else take their decisions for them.

So the designer asks questions for a long period of time, and just continues asking questions when others would stop asking too quickly and instead start coming up with solutions. We dare to continue asking and when we feel like we have enough information, only then do we start looking through the answers in order to construct an answer that solves the task at hand. We connect dots in such a way that they create the answer.

As those of you who have read my previous posts may know, I’m an architect. Well, according to my degree I’m an architect… but if you ask my architect friends what I am, they have a hard time explaining what it is that I do. This might sound a bit odd, seeing that I’ve met many of them during my time at uni, but I do understand their trouble of defining what I do—I can hardly explain what I do, so how could they possibly do so?

Being an undefinable creative individual myself, I end up talking with a lot of kindred spirits, young and old, who are finding it hard to find/make a space for themselves in the field for which they have studied. Fashion designers exploring art, architects tackling social problems, graphic designers working in music, lawyers developing furniture, and the list goes on and on and on.

One of the things that defines us all is that we are creative, no matter what field we were or are in, our mind always find new ways of solving problems, develop new visions and handling tasks. Some of these talents are more tactile: a musician makes a new melody, an architect designs the scenography for a theatre piece, a fashion designer designs jewelry, and so on and so forth. Those are easy to understand, easy to write down and showcase in a portfolio.

Then we come to the tricky part, how do you showcase your creative side when it comes to problem-solving, people skills, your way of bringing positive energy to a business, your way of making teams work more fluidly, helping people find and nourish their passion in everything they do, how you make people feel comfortable when you are around, create an atmosphere that drives creativity to a higher level, how you make people trust you and truly talk to you, your burning curiosity that makes (almost) every subject interesting, or your way of twisting a situation into something positive or at least into something you can learn from?

These are a few things that are really hard to write down on a CV or application when looking for a job. These are the things that you do not learn when studying at a design school. These are the things that every workplace needs, but hardly any workplace asks for when posting a job opening.

You can be the best young architect in the world, but if you are horrible at working with others, you can’t communicate with you client or the engineers, you make people uncomfortable around you, and you make people feel like you are draining their energy rather then giving it to them, you will not last very long at any studio.

I’ve met many talented designers with various combinations of the soft skills mentioned above, who feel like they are falling in between the cracks since they don’t know how to define the soft skills in a way that they connect with the person reading their resumé. Many people in creative vocations have studied and graduated from university, but feel like their true skillset is a mixture between the hard skills, their soft skills and their passion for something completely different.

I see so much passion fade away within this mish-mash field of talent that it scares me. All of this positive energy going to waste. They don’t fit into a regular box of what they should do according to their degree; instead, they remain far outside of it. Sometimes they wish they fit the box, but they know that trying to fit into the box, to change themselves, to cut themselves into pieces would kill them.

So now my question to you is; How can we use this energy for good rather then to let it fade away? And do you have any suggestions on how these sort of people get these soft skills come across on their resumé/CV?

The MoHo Process Kit for the design of learning environments contains various tools and equipment that make it possible to design processes involving the users. In the kit you amongst others find; process plans which can be used as guides through the planning of the overall process, collection of examples, showing different ways to build processes, method cards with descriptions of various exercises and assignments and props, supporting the exercises. A summary of the kit contents can be viewed below.

Who is it addressed to?
MoHo Process Kit is designed for designers, teachers, schools and architects to focus on the interaction between learning environments and the pedagogical approach.

What is co-creative processes?
A process consists of a series of sequences that relate to each other and generates new knowledge along the way as the process unfolds. The more sequences, the more resources are required. The co-creative process is focused on creating as a team. The  focus on learning environments means that the participants get involved in the development of the physical environment, to improve the quality of the final solutions.

What is the purpose?
Involving users can produce outputs at two levels:

A) Ownership of the project.
B) Democratic processes where the context is a an fundamental parameter.

You can choose to focus more on one level than the other. you have to make sure that the users know the frame so they do not experience breach of trust during the process. If you choose to focus on B, where the users are involved in the development, you will normally embrace A as well. However, one should expect that this type of process is more resource intensive than the former.

When is it an advantage?
By involving the people using the space on a day-to-day basis it’s easier to focus on the interaction between the pedagogical approach and the physical environment and thereby qualify the design. You can work with co-creative processes when new schools are being designed, and old ones being renovated and upgraded. The framework focuses on enhancing the play between architecture and pedagogy and makes it clear to see how the co-creative process can be a part of a transformative process of change in which schools become wiser about their values and visions and what requirements it imposes on the learning environments.

How to design co-creative processes:
Processes can vary a lot, it all comes down to scope, duration and to what extent you wish it to effect the building. First you should carefully consider the goal of the process, and then decide what kind of involvement is optimal. You must also know what resources are available, then the process can be adapted accordingly. When the process is designed it is important to involve users only to the extent it is needed, this makes the process more targeted and overall more effective.

How to use the kit:
In the kit you will find different tools and props to help you get started with designing co-creative processes. It is important that you familiarize yourself with the materials and get your own experience. The various tools and props must be adapted to the process you decide to work with. It is important that you relate to the goal and the users. The answers you seek can be found in many different ways – just make sure to find a method that suits the targeted audience. Make sure to make your own reflections along the way, thus you can easily adjust the process next time you design a course.

One of the first spaces that tourist see when arriving with the buss from the various airports of Milan is Piazza Luigi Di Savoia. In this very now, the Piazza is not something that represents the beauty and cultural level of Milan. By creating a stage that is just as beautiful in use as out of use, it creates a space that literally reflects the true beauty of the city.