What design can do
There is a need for a new role for the designer in society. A need for designers who can develop new scenario’s and explore new landscapes what design can do. By breaking down the studio walls and standing in direct contact with society designers can work with real scenario and connect directly with the community. This enables a new fresh thinking and experimental journeys that can build a design practice by the intuition and potential that co-design inhabits.
This academic study project has been designed around a dynamic design studio with an enormous amount of experience with 2nd world cultures. This allows a great access into knowledge and diversity for research, experiment and the designing of scenario’s, systems and product within the framework of co-design and cross-cultural thinking. “How can we transform experiences from these 2nd world cultures into inspiring solution for our western society”. There is so much to learn and explore from both sides, what design can do!
We facilitate a hands-on design research on location and for this we invite dynamic, pro-active and intuitive student who want to design and think out new scenario’s, develop ideas, products and new systems and are driven by crossing cultures and working by co-design methods. This design project will focus on creating a new development and generation of designers and their practice.
This study project is part of a series of design/applied arts graduate projects of the HKU Art Academy in Utrecht. The program and facilitation has been developed by Judith van den Boom, Bas Kools and Gunter Wehmeyer of platform Local Intelligence and in context-collaboration with the team of the co-design studio Butterfly Works who provided their inspiring projects as case studies for the students. 
