Buro5: Design in the neighbourhoodA Buro seminar of Utrecht School of the Arts
School of Visual Communication
September 2006
Coordination: Paul Gofferje, (organisation) Anke Coumans (research and publicity)
At the beginning of the new course year, students of Visual Communication (Graphic Design, Illustration, Photography) explored the neighbourhoods of Utrecht. Their assignment was: create some form of public communications based on a personal relationship with the citizens of Utrecht.
During one week five groups of students, under the supervision of five different designers developed their own way of artistic research. Their aim was to develop design solutions which bring about social change or to evoke a new view on social reality.
My question is: have they developed1 unorthodox (from an artistic point of view),
2 effective (from a communicative point of view) and
3 interesting (from an anthropological and social perspective)
ways of investigation? And what can be learned from it?
Bureau Neighbourhoodsupervisor: Paul Gofferje
This group of students, calling themselves ‘Bureau Neighbourhood’, immediately established contact with the gypsies living next to the school. They invited them to a workshop painting. Two days later the gypsies (most of them were children) showed up at school and together they had a joyful afternoon.
This stimulating form of personal interaction between two different parties in the same neighbourhood resulted in the wish to start an office for neighbourly integration. This form of integration demands a mutual investment on both sides.
Bureau Elderlysupervisor: Bart van Leeuwen
The second group of students was transported to a home for the elderly. They worked voluntarily as a part of the staff and they had to integrate their design assignment during the obligations in the elderly home. This group performed, without knowing it, a form of embedded participatory action research. . Intimately involved with their target group, the students soon discovered the cravings of the elderly. Mostly it were things they were no longer able to do: a stroll down the park, visit a football match, cycle on a dike et cetera. The students decided to make a collage film full off images the elderly were pining for. The research had an enormous impact on the students. Besides knowledge it offered them an experience that changed their view on life.
crossing routes/sharingthoughtssupervisor: Dimitri Nieuwenhuizen
The third group started with a philosophical lecture from their supervisor about the thoughts of Deleuze, Foucoult, Nietsche and Mc Luhan. As a consequence they questioned themselves as designers. They were a reflective and conceptual group investigating the concept of ‘neighbourhood’ and ‘group’. What is a neighbourhood? How does a group emerge and exist? Their conclusion: A group exists on basis of shared values/thoughts. On the basis of these research results the group designed an interactive communication tool, A public sign post showing crossing thoughts.
Seminar Pleasantsupervisor: Elena Simons
The supervisor of the fourth group showed the group her realised interventions in public space. The group challenged themselves to find a resounding amusing intervention to enhance a form of pleasant contact between the hasty citizens on central station. Out of their ideas they choose to develop ‘the wave goodbye service’.
Travellers could subscribe to three waves: the small one, a medium and a big wave.
Office Sterrenwijksupervisor: Martijn Engelbregt
The last group was challenged by the provoking research methods of their supervisor to get to know the reactions of groups of people. Their supervisor gave them objects to use to get to know (to ‘research’) the neighbourhood: a parrot made of stone, a baking tin, a party tent. They used these objects to get in touch (and provoke) the inhabitants. The results of their actions were placed in a small newspaper, which was handed over personally to provoke contact.
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