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PRIME SHAKING OFF NOSTALGIA
When we were asked by Nicolas Le Moigne to hold a workshop at ECAL in collaboration with Vacheron Constantin, we immediately accepted since the project was conceived as challenging and inspiring for the students. The idea of having 12 Master students paired with as many local craftsmen is a tremendous educational opportunity. As we have experienced in our work, design as a discipline is at its best when based on collaboration. The aim of the workshop was to guide the students to generate ideas via research and a profound understanding of the qualities, the tradition and the relation with locality that every single craft has. In this respect the challenge as mentors has been to push the students to avoid nostalgia and to use design as a pragmatic tool to reveal the contemporary relevance of craft. What ECAL offered to us as mentors and to the students is a great platform where design wasn’t discussed just on an academic level but in context. As in our work, we love it when ideas are developed by directly experimenting with materials and production processes. What has been great with this experience is that we had complete freedom in working with the students, and over time it felt more like working in a studio or a design collective than in an educational context. Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi (Studio Formantasma)
EMBRACING TRADITION AND INNOVATION Left, under the guidance of Formafantasma’s designers, the students at the ECAL in Lausanne have merged their creativity with the skills of 12 Swiss craftsmen. Top, the picnic hamper made by a saddler (www.ecal.ch).
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