Educational Proposals Radical Thoughts Unfinished Projects & Design Ideas
CoAgency – Designing with Nature
Clams equipped with motion sensors help protect a city’s water supply. When water quality drops, the clams close—and that simple movement triggers the shutdown of water pumps. The result? A rare alignment of human infrastructure with natural behavior—an unspoken alliance where both parties benefit. This project invites to explore how we can co-design systems that give nature a functional voice—systems where biological processes improve urban life while also creating safer, more respectful conditions for the organisms involved. This is not about controlling nature—but collaborating with it.
INFO
https://www.johnfhuntwater.co.uk/resources/news/how-clams-keep-water-clean-in-poland/
'Broadening Perspective' Series
This project proposes a poster that systematically compares various world map projection methods. The poster will feature a grid layout displaying each projection type alongside a representative map image. A clear title, subtitle, and visual structure will help communicate the strengths and distortions of each projection at a glance. The goal is to provide a concise, visual reference for understanding how the world can be represented differently depending on projection choices.
OK Machine
The OK Machine is an interactive wooden device equipped with analog knobs, digital displays, and input elements. Users enter personal data such as year of birth, country of origin, gender, profession, parental background, income, lifestyle, and more. Based on these parameters, the machine calculates the probability of living a secure life today. The system incorporates data on press freedom, life expectancy, financial stability, political influence, climate risk, and other socio-economic and environmental indicators. The result is shown as a percentage on a digital display.
INFO
https://blog.berrybase.de/arduino-vs-raspberry-pi-welches-board-fuer-dein-diy-projekt/
life.zip
According to this study, all humans fit into this huge pile inside the Grand Canyon. This raises the question: how much space do we really need? How many resources are currently needed to guarantee surviving. Compare our standards of living around the world and put into perspective, what seems excessive and how many people are living below a poverty line. Reflect on the psychological and cultural expectations that define "a good life" and question whether abundance is necessary for well-being. Consider how technology, design, and community structures could be reimagined to support fulfillment without consumption. Following this, create a concept of living with minimal resources and zero impact on nature, that still secures basic needs.
INFO
https://ktar.com/aps-stories/see-what-every-human-crammed-into-the-grand-canyon-would-look-like
Convenience is the death of humanity
This project challenges students to critically engage with the idea that convenience may be eroding the foundations of human agency, attention, and sustainability. By designing objects, systems, or experiences that disrupt or subvert convenience, students will explore what is lost when life is made effortless—and what might be regained through intentional friction, slowness, or effort. The goal is not to reject innovation, but to question the hidden costs of ease and reimagine design as a tool for deeper engagement with the world.
INFO
https://medium.com/@jeffhaywardwriting/convenience-is-killing-us-all-a34ecf0f8591
Never not political
This project begins from the premise that design is never neutral—every object, interface, or system reflects values, priorities, and power structures. Students will critically examine how design shapes social, economic, and environmental realities, whether intentionally or not. Through speculative or real-world projects, they will explore how design can both reinforce and challenge the status quo, asking: What politics are embedded in what we create—and how can we design with awareness, accountability, and agency?
INFO
https://medium.com/@j_camachor/how-design-is-politics-5418d9077df0
Urban Temporary Transformation
Urban landscapes are full of overlooked potential: vacant lots, forgotten corners, and fenced-off spaces that lie unused—silent gaps in the city’s rhythm. This project invites students to reimagine these voids not as problems, but as opportunities for cohabitation, care, and community. Are these spaces refuges for urban wildlife and spontaneous nature, or should they be activated through Zwischennutzung—temporary, low-threshold uses that serve human needs? Students will explore how these sites can host micro-architectures for the unhoused, community gardens, or spaces of collective repair, while balancing ecological sensitivity. The project asks: Who gets to use empty space, and what values should guide its reuse?
Luxury of Destruction
This project questions the logic of the "used look" in fashion—where garments are intentionally torn, faded, or distressed, while real material need and poverty persist globally. Perfectly good clothing is made only to be destroyed, generating waste and celebrating artificial decay. Why do holes in jeans signal style, while a scratched microwave signals trash? Students will explore this contradiction by applying the same aesthetic logic to unexpected everyday objects. What happens when wear and tear are celebrated in appliances, furniture, or tools? The project invites critical and material experimentation around authenticity, privilege, and performance in design and consumption.
Epoxy Everything
This course explores the deep-seated human drive to stabilize what is inherently unstable: from the ancient impulse to tame rivers and convert nomadic lifestyles into settled societies, to the industrial transformation of liquid crude oil into solid, long-lasting plastics. We investigate how these actions reflect a desire for control, continuity, and permanence in a world shaped by decay, movement, and transformation. By examining how design actively reshapes natural temporalities—stretching, freezing, or accelerating them—we uncover the cultural and material consequences of creating objects and systems that resist impermanence.
Through a combination of theoretical inquiry and hands-on material experimentation, students critically engage with the tension between ephemerality and solidity. They will explore how design can both challenge and align with the natural flow of time, developing works that reflect on duration, decay, resilience, and transience in the built and lived environment.
INFO
https://dgou.de/aktuelles/detail/pfas-forever-chemicals-fluch-oder-segen
The Nature of the Digital – Resources, Reality, and the New Materiality
Once seen as separate, the digital world now reveals its deep reliance on the physical: data centers need water, AI consumes massive energy, and rare earths power virtual systems. This project explores how digital infrastructure competes with nature for finite resources.
Through research and speculative design, students will examine the environmental impact of digital systems, who benefits from them, and imagine futures where the line between natural and digital is blurred. Who wins the fight for energy, water, and matter in a world that is both virtual and material?
INFO
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-impacts-data-centers-water-data/
Zero Cost Home Decoration
Taking the principles of 'Hartz IV Möbel' one step further: is it possible to build an entire set of furniture from found materials alone?
Task: Spend exactly one day—24 hours, no more, no less—collecting discarded materials in your neighborhood. Hunt for wood, metal, fabric, or hybrid objects: whatever you can find that others have thrown away. Over the following weeks, you will use only this collection to build functioning pieces of furniture for your own home.
You decide how far you want to deconstruct or alter the materials, but the final pieces must clearly originate from your one-day collection. This is a test of resourcefulness, creativity, and hands-on making—rethinking value through limitation.
World Wide Weg
If no one on the internet is real anymore – where has everybody gone?
"World Wide Weg" explores the implications of the "Dead Internet Theory" — the idea that much of today's online activity is generated by bots, AI, and automated content, while real human presence is fading. This project investigates the erosion of authenticity in digital spaces and asks what new cultural, social, or artistic ideas might emerge in response. As the internet becomes increasingly synthetic, "World Wide Weg" examines where human experience might relocate: into analog spaces, alternative networks, or entirely new forms of interaction. Through speculative design, research, and public engagement, the project aims to map a future where the human retreat from digital life opens new creative and existential possibilities.
Wasteland Dystopia
Germany 2050: With an everchanging climate and no positive outlook in sight it will be a crucial part of daily life to harvest what little nature provides. Develop a handful of methods to survive in a modern world of scarce materials and supplies.
This design project asks you to imagine and prototype tools, systems, or practices for surviving in this speculative but plausible near-future. You will design for a society where materials are scarce, electricity is unreliable, and food, water, and clean air are precious.
Yet this is not about despair—it’s about resourcefulness. What might a culture of survival look like in a modern, urbanized context? How can design respond to scarcity not with collapse, but with creativity?
The Everything Epoch: Searching for the Architecture of Now
"Everything Epoch" is a research-driven project that questions the current state of architecture in a time where stylistic clarity appears absent. Are we in a transitional phase, or has contemporary architecture lost its unifying direction entirely? The project explores whether we still live in a defined architectural epoch—or if we’ve entered a state of permanent remix, where buildings are reduced to citations of past styles without a shared vision for the future.
By analyzing current trends in global and local architecture, the project investigates what—if anything—defines the present era. Is there a dominant form, material, or philosophy guiding new construction, or are we witnessing the dissolution of cohesive styles in favor of fragmented, contextless aesthetics? "Everything Epoch" seeks to identify whether a new architectural language is emerging, or whether architecture has become a post-epochal field, shaped more by market forces and nostalgia than by innovation or ideology.
Image of Self
Where past generations encountered their own image only rarely—through mirrors, portraits, or photographs—today, we are surrounded by our own reflection: in front-facing cameras, social media profiles, surveillance footage, and live video calls. This project asks: What does it do to a person to see themselves constantly? Does this continuous self-exposure alter our sense of identity? Are we performing a version of ourselves that slowly replaces the original?
It explores the emergence of a “digital persona” — a constructed version of ourselves shaped by repetition, curation, and technology. "Image of Self" questions whether this external version of the self starts to take over, and whether people in earlier times, with fewer reflections, lived in closer alignment with who they really were.
INFO
https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/11765/looking-glass
Please Recharge Soccer Ball
The image of FIFA’s official match balls being charged like smartphones or laptops reveals a strange reality: even the most analog, iconic objects—like the humble soccer ball—are now part of the global digital infrastructure. What was once simply kicked is now tracked, monitored, and updated.
This project challenges students to imagine, prototype, and critique a near-future scenario where nearly all physical objects require energy, connectivity, and data processing to function—regardless of whether it enhances their core purpose.
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