Studio Body Building
Studio Body Building focuses on design closest to and surrounding the body. We explore the body as a vehicle and tool for communication. Through our appearance, we send (visual) cues about our characteristics: gender, sexual orientation, ethnic background, age, status and social, cultural and political viewpoints. Through our identity, we can distinguish ourselves from the 'other' while simultaneously striving for a sense of social bonding and belonging.
Our body is a canvas — we dress, decorate and display it while also having the capability to camouflage or disguise it. Our body is a multi-functional 'pamphlet' — we can use it to express our perspectives, attitudes and beliefs or to protest and subvert. Our body can be an instrument of exchange — we can use it to link with other bodies, and we can use it to interact with space. Drawing upon our intuition, sensibility and imagination, we can invent and reinvent our self- and group identity, both in the physical world and virtual realms.
Studio Body Building sees the body as a designer's main tool, which we always have with us standing with one foot in the present and one in the future.
Working
Students will work with a myriad of assignments at the same time. This multiplicitous approach offers students the opportunity to compile their personal working methodologies, preferences and affinities towards design. Assignments are outlined without fixed outcomes, leaving space for the individuality of the student and the diversity of the group.
Researching by making and thinking by doing are design processes that are important working methods at Studio Body Building. The student will encounter a variety of teaching designers. All tutors bring in their personal design expertise that lies in the broad field of identity-related design. Their teaching forms differ: from short, hands-on workshops to half (or full) semester individual and group assignments. Studio Body Building teaches in a two- or three-week interval in order to enhance an autonomous, independent and choice-making design attitude (kill your darlings).
Studio Body Building has a programme structure that encourages students and teachers to explore and pursue diversity and a variety of open conversations and discourses. Design is or has a narrative – we explore the storytelling.
Terminology
Studio Body Building stands for a design mindset where curiosity and open-mindedness are pursued with a positive confusion, an assertive unknowing. In combination with the antennae of intuition as an essential radar, Body Building encourages the exploring and broadening of your design horizons.
→Swiftness Studio Body Building offers a dynamic and diverse environment. This requires a flexible and open mindset and a multiplicitous attitude ('a large head'), together with a cultural prism. Body Building students feel 'a need for speed', to be able to make versatile and rapid design moves, to react fearlessly and swiftly to changes in society. Studio Body Building could be described as ‘nowness’. Studio Body Building encourages 'poly-passionates' and multipotentialites.
→Signature | Character | Authenticity | Style Idiom Good design reflects the individual spirit and expression of the designer. Studio Body Building students will develop a personal handwriting that enables them to distinguish themselves. Therefore, they are required to be curious, open-minded and eager to develop a large frame of reference, which leads to a solid and nuanced fundament for meaningful and inventive design. In good design, signature and authenticity are essential but are nevertheless always ancillary to content and application of the product. Studio Body Building focuses on 'now-' and 'newness' in the identity and appearance of people.
→Nowness Good design reflects the spirit of the time in which we live. Studio Body Building urges students to anticipate the future zeitgeist. Students will have a set of 'antennae'— the intuition — for the things that are brewing beneath the surface of our daily lives. They are able to sense which influences from contemporary society will affect tomorrow’s needs, tastes and styles. They possess a natural notion of 'nowness' and develop a keen eye for things that are going on in the world at large, in low, mainstream as well as high culture. In order to reflect the current time, Studio Body Building students should be aware of history as well as contemporary and visionary developments in their professional field.
→Material Sense Studio Body Building is focused on style and appearance-related products, including products used close to the body, to be regularly touched by human hands. Students will therefore be able to anticipate the sensitivity and sensibility of products. Sense of quality, tactility, the drape, the sound, the scent, whether it is textile, leather or artificial material, wood, ceramic, metal, paper or other materials. Students are also encouraged to think about the social and climatal impact of materials towards the other/the outside world.
→Craftsmanship | Editing Good design is realisable. The suitable making and production method can take a design to a higher level. A product is successful when the execution of the product is in line with content and goal. The student applies achieved knowledge and skills to make the end product concrete and strives for the best possible techniques for execution. If this way is not feasible or limited, the student knows how to convince with a well-visualised non-operative, yet communicative mock-up. Also, the appropriate selection of elements will improve the quality of design. The term 'kill your darlings' is often used to express the necessity to remain critical about one’s own work results.
Collaborative Projects
2022: collaboration project with Danish textile company Kvadrat. 2023: collaboration project with Dutch wallpaper manufacture BN International. 2024: exhibition of the outcome of second year students at the Schoenenkwartier from 26 January to 1 April 2024. 2024: collaboration with Stedelijk Museum Breda and EE Labels on the lost Nassau tapestries, tapestry “X”