Over the past six months, the Design Academy Eindhoven, regional water board De Dommel and the IABR have collaborated on a transdisciplinary research studio on water, bringing together the five master’s programs of the Design Academy Eindhoven. The results of the THIRST research program are available online.
This research program was initiated by Lada Hršak (Bureau LADA) under the supervision of Afaina de Jong (founder of AFARAI and head of Contextual Design). THIRST aims to complement and challenge existing water-related knowledge by positioning design at the intersection of technology, policy, science, and artistic practice. The increasingly extreme climate confronts our landscape with the urgencies of rising water levels, a lack of climate justice and social justice, exploitation, pollution and questions of empathy, kinship and the coexistence of multiple living species.
The focus is on thirst as a metaphor and the question of what cultural values are relevant as equivalents to those of the mostly technocratic realm of large deltaic area design. What is the role and creative attitude of designers, when the future of our planetary system and our use of water at different scales are at stake?
Click here to visit the THIRST website, designed by Lina von Jaruntowski and development by Lukas Siemoneit.
