Its the day we come together, see all projects after each other, the day we meet our partners and welcome guests but its also the moment we are able to see what each of the groups learned, understood or had difficulties with. And as usual the finals are also the day we set up our exhibition and are able to see all the projects in a row.
This one was special, not only due to the challenging task thinking about the Personal Comfort Zone but also due to the fact of the scale. We often design a fraction of a facade, something cut out of the bigger picture - still in full scale but most likely not the full thing ...this time it was different. The location was the open office plan- a place every student is already fully emerged into. Sitting together in a crowded open office plan makes every member of our groups already an expert as user. Some actually had chosen to conquer the task to design a new chair - of course a work every architect dream of and most likely has done once - omg and that with Ahrend as a partner - designing chairs for more than 100 years ...
What can we say ...what could have been the most disastrous semester turned actually into the most divers and honestly one of the best up to now. We have never seen the students so engaged, passionated and busy through the entire semester and finally able to keep that pace til the finishing line.
The diversity from a small lamp that also provides air to a seat that allows you to retrieve from the noisy office - all scales were tackled.
At the end our guests from Ahrend which also asked very good questions and started the dialog with the students and our docents during the presentations complimented our projects and the solutions presented.
Some valuable points we like to share :
- always build prototypes, allow to test these from different users
- don't use a chronological order but show already the product and its special qualities in the beginning and explain how you have achieved that by sharing sketches, problems and also failures during this process
And while we usually have to tell the students at the end of each semester that this course is not about the product but about the process we may be wrong this time - some have actually the potential to be further developed and our wonderful journey with Ahrend may not be ended today...
we will stop here, but will show more details about the projects here in the next weeks, but here some impressions of the day and a special Thank you to our guests from Ahrend
