OPEN CALL: Designers in Residence Kortrijk 2022 , Kortrijk / Belgien

 

Designregio Kortrijk VZW

 

Designregio Kortrijk is looking for 3 highly motivated and recently graduated designer-makers or creative artists to join in a regional residency program in Kortrijk, Belgium.

 

The Designers in Residence Kortrijk program is a 3-month full time residency from September to December 2022.

 

Theme: The future of the Daily

 

Magazines and websites are constantly promoting special places, new products and spectacular objects. There are numerous publications, articles or commercials on the High Line in New York, Nespresso, the Apple watch, etc. All celebrating the extraordinary qualities of these places, products and objects. Conceptualised and constructed as high-end projects, they become a contemporary standard for other projects.

 

Their design is copied, reused, reinterpreted and brought into (cultural) contexts to which they hardly relate. They have become a sort of international standard of good design.

 

And yet, in our daily lives, we aren’t surrounded by these high-end projects. Most of the time we live in, and are surrounded by, rather banal and dull spaces and objects. Things that don’t meet the standards of magazines and websites at all but still fulfil an important role in the lives of many people. A bus stop, a parking lot near the supermarket, a white plastic garden chair. Spaces and objects that connect and bring people together from all walks of life. These are spaces and objects that often balance between the formal representation of society and all types of informal appropriation and (mis)use. These spaces and objects have been subject of research by, for instance, J.B. Jackson or Margaret Crawford and coined as collective spaces, loose space, thickened space, etc.

 

This year’s Designers in Residence program will focus on the daily. How to distinguish the extraordinary from the daily? How can these spaces and objects be identified? What determines them? What role do they play in people’s lives? How do they connect and strengthen interpersonal relations? How do they relate to our online alter ego? What (spatial) features do they have? And above all, what future do they have?

 

Designregio Kortrijk provides for the selected Designers in Residence Kortrijk:

- accommodation

- monthly fee (400 €/month)

- usage of Budalab Open Makerspace

- experts in several domains and support of Designregio Kortrijk

- one-time travel expenses

 

Submission deadline: July 04, 2022