#HTE

The 2022 WantedDesign Schools Workshop, presented with Core77, is Back in Person in May during NYCxDESIGN

The 2022 WantedDesign Schools Workshop (the program started in 2012) will take place once again at Industry City, Brooklyn, in the beautiful Camp David co-working studio space, from May 10 to May 14 during NYCxDESIGN.

PARTICIPATING SCHOOLS are:

Appalachian State University (USA) Art Center College for Design (USA) Centro (Mexico) Monica Herrera (El Salvador) Pratt Institute (USA) Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico)

The participating students from the 6 schools will be organized into 7 teams of 4 or 5 students. The workshop is intense by nature, and constrained so participants go from concept to finalized ritual within a five day period. The beauty of the workshop is that students will working in creative, collaborative teams. The students coming from all 6 schools will bring fresh perspectives, unique ideas and varied backgrounds.

The goal is: Break out of your norms. Listen, engage and develop understandings and insights that push your process and designs to new levels. The teams will work together to create a new artifact-based ritual to help people rebalance, reconnect, revitalize, and refocus.

The final presentation to the Jury, led by Allan Chochinov (School of Visual Arts, Core77) will take place on Saturday, May 14, 2-4pm, at Industry City.

To learn more about this year’s workshop, we chatted with the leaders of the 2022 WantedDesign Schools Workshop, Appalachian State University’s Donald Corey, Professor and Industrial Design Program Director, and Michael Rall, Associate Professor and Assistant Chair of the Department of Applied Design.

The 2022 workshop theme is “NEW RITUALS: Reconnecting, revitalizing, and refocusing through ceremony and artifact”; Can you elaborate on the theme?

For two years [throughout the pandemic], everyone’s lives, schedules, interactions, and daily benchmarks were changed, disappeared, or forever altered. We felt it was important as designers that we look closely and discuss, “how do we readjust to the paradigm of this ‘new’ world?” There is a lot less of the familiar. What used to balance, strengthen, and connect us has in many ways changed, been interrupted or disappeared completely. This workshop asks the students to evaluate what is missing. What do they need, and what is possible for them to envision and create together that will fill those voids, by nurturing, reconnecting, and refocusing them and others. We saw the creation of a ceremony or ritual, something that is tangible and repeatable, as a great vehicle to explore those possibilities and concepts they design.

The WantedDesign Schools Workshop is coming back in person, after the 2 last years being virtual; should we expect a “before” and “after” in terms of the students’ spirit and general outcome?

Humans need each other, and designers (especially) inherently need to be inspired by others, share with others, and grow with each other. The shared design experience, in person, is its purest embodiment. It allows students to be honest, engaged, and notice the idiosyncrasies of each other: their environment, and the underlying energy between all these things that is lost when interactions are conducted between screens. It is our hope that through this amazing dynamic experience, the students recognize and tap into that energy and each other, allowing exponential creative growth and understanding to occur.

What do you think the deliverables will be from the student teams? Is there anything in particular that you are hoping to see?

There is absolutely no way to tell or even guess where these projects will go. The international makeup of the groups, their backgrounds, their differences, their similarities, their shared experiences, the different lenses they will employ, all work to create way too many variables to even guess. But what we hope to see are concepts that really engage the senses, the user(s), and the environment. And at the same time, we want the students to leave the workshop energized, feeling better connected to themselves, others, and happier than when they came.

Anything you would like to add as being the school leading the workshop this year?

Michael and I are honored to lead this workshop. The schools involved are all amazing bastions of creative thought, insight, and expression. Appalachian State is proud to be included and add our lenses to the scope of what we are all looking for: a better world, a more inclusive and sustainable world. We are so glad that WantedDesign allowed us to help start the discussion on how we might all participate in making that vision happen.

If you’re interested in learning more about the 2022 WantedDesign Schools Workshop, click here, and stay tuned for more information about the winners of the workshop in the coming months!