LowTech
BA Major Design
BA Product Design Project
Summer semester
The technical effort we invest in designing our world often exceeds the actual demand and misses its common use.
In consequence we look for solutions to problems that result from over-engineered products with and a one-sided image of innovation.
The fragility of complex (immature) constructs is regularly revealed when trivial actions in daily life become incomprehensible, unreliable, expensive or simply don´t work.
In this project the students were asked to develop counter-designs to this.
Using simple construction methods and principles of operation, make products flexible in use, easier to understand, to maintain.
Objects of daily use and their entire life cycle were to be examined, radically simplified or reinterpreted.
The topic was approached through practical exercises and an intense discourse about the role, qualities and challenges of lowtech in design.
We found that behind its definition of reduced technical complexity, more than that lowtech is a mindset that challenges us to make much out of little
and take an active part in problem-solving, aquiring new know-how, strategies and skills.
We looked at developments of tools, materials and methods, how they influence the way products are thought, developed, made and used,
as well as their environmental and social impacts.
The students sharpened their view for the essentials, (real) user-needs and forgotten abilities, to translate these insights into product concepts.
