Afaina de Jong
Afaina de Jong is an architect and researcher with a diverse practice which ranges from design and curating, to community organising and graphic design. She is an early pioneer in self-initiated architecture in the Netherlands, who describes her interest in the conditions of urban living as influenced by the experience of growing up in Amsterdam in the 80s and 90s, “when it was full of punk, squatting and grafitti“, while projecting a unique vision of the future. In an interview published by DAE, De Jong describes her work as an intersectional feminist design practice which strives to bring forth change. “We have to let go of the idea of the universal user, which is an outdated modernist idea in a time when our identities are super complex. (…) It’s important to cultivate the power of the imagination and narrative.“
As a designer, De Jong is interested in deciphering and deconstructing given contexts and questioning positions through praxis. “If we take our ‘givens’ for granted, we assume what reality is, and then don’t even see or can’t even value something that is outside of that context, because we do not have the tools for it.“
De Jong describes her vision for the Master Contextual Design as the generation of spatial awareness and public contexts, which would necessitate a revision of our positions and power as designers, and recognise the relationships between objects and space, power, identity, ecology and history. “Once we recognise the layers that lie beneath the ‘givens’, these all start to inform the creation of new design languages.“
Design Academy Eindhoven is excited to welcome architect Afaina de Jong as the new head of its Masters in Contextual Design. De Jong will replace the current head Louise Schouwenberg as of September 2021.
Photo by Laila Cohen