Morning Studio - Thomas Lommée

Within the studio, we focus on autonomous design practices with a positive impact, that initiate projects and build communities. We focus on collective processes, using the power of the collective at certain points within design processes, because if we're trying to initiate change this can’t be done alone. Within the studio we create project ecosystems where each individual project by a student or teacher is like a point on a map, interconnected with other projects of fellow students and teachers which reinforce one another.  

One semester, we focused on bread. We asked what the value of bread was in the past and what its value is today. We challenged the social value of bakeries, of making bread and the ecological and economical impact of bread. Bread prices can start a revolution. 

We tend to look at bold ideas and pragmatic elaborations. All in all, we focus on giving students a deeper understanding about sustainable design principles, however vague and frustrating the word ‘sustainability’ might be. We highly value awareness about our contexts, society, and certain dynamics, and then, on the other hand, we value care. This means putting care into the solutions that we're proposing, using design in a careful way. 

For us as a teacher team, the studio is our design project. It's important for us to have a certain mentality that thrives on constant exploration and experimentation, trying things out and learning as you go along. It's important that students don’t only focus on their progressions, but also put all their steps into context to understand how the things they did the previous week relate to the things they did before that, and what they learned in-between. It’s not only about looking forward, but also about looking back to inform the next steps. This attitude takes some pressure off the final result.  

The profession is constantly changing so much and so quickly that we're also pushing to learn how to learn. We constantly see a learning process as small steps of reflecting and staying up to date. I think that's inherent in the school model. Bringing in people from the field who have their own practices, who see teaching as something that is inspiring and interesting, but not their main source of income. This way, we teach students to be comfortable with constant change, which is the mentality that the curriculum our studio is based on. 

In the first semester, we always work with a partner because we think it's important that students are confronted with people who don't have a design related background. For example, last semester, we worked with somebody who has a farm in Ghent which the students went to and explored. They made groups and coordinated their collective research, which was then used as the fundament for individual projects. Here, everything was structured around the seasons of spring, summer, autumn, winter, and there was a constant dialog with the people of the farm. Talking to people, doing experiments at the location with a partner, moving out of the design bubble, that's very important. 

I think that it’s very important to be moving, getting in touch and seeing how autonomous practices can look like and how they can operate. Practices might look different today than they did before. What I'm designing might no longer be a product, a publication or a website, it might actually be all of that together. So, it becomes important that designers get an understanding of certain basic rules and that they are able to apply these to different media, even to music. I think it’s important that designers can detect certain patterns, and translate them from music to sculpture, from sculpture to graphics – because our tools have changed. Before, tools were very specific to a profession and discipline. The photographer had a very expensive camera, the filmmaker had a very expensive editing table and so on, but now we have relatively cheap tools with which to do everything, and that changes the skill set that is needed, so it's much more about recognising and applying general patterns, rather than fostering one very specific skill. Design is more about mentality.