Circular Design Practices and Processes (IP)

What skills will designers and creators need in the future to conceive and design circular products, processes and services? How will the aesthetics of design change in the process? And what does this mean for contemporary education and training for design and art?

Evelyne Roth, Fashion Design, didn't want to address these questions alone, so she invited HGK-wide to a roundtable discussion. The initialization project Circular Design Practices and Processes emerged from these discussions. The proposal was submitted by Prof. Dr. Jörg Wiesel (Head of Fashion Design ICDP, project leader), Evelyne Roth (Lecturer Fashion Design ICDP and PhD student Make/Sens Program IXDM), Dr. Meret Ernst (Lecturer Industrial Design ICDP) and Prof. Andreas Wenger (Head of Scenography IN3 ICDP, deputy project leader).

The goals were to advance conceptual clarifications in the area of circularity; to survey how these topics have been taught and researched at the HGK Basel to date; to formulate coordinated research proposals; and to anchor circularity and sustainability in the fourfold performance mandate of the HGK Basel in the long term.

At two workshops with participants from all HGK institutes and departments, four topics emerged, which will be worked on autonomously and multiperspectively by working groups:

Archives: Danielle Harris, Eva Böhlen, Meret Ernst, Markus Aerni, Mara Rodriguez, Eva-Ruth Hauck, Tabea Lurk

Didactics: Evelyne Roth, Meret Ernst, Marion Fink, Angela Grosso Ciponte, Markus Schwander, Jörg Wiesel

Diversity: Aylin Ylidirim Tschoepe, Lea Kuhn

Network: Andrea Wenger, Benedikt Jaeggi, Evelyne Roth, Françoise Payot, Nikulina Fuduric (HfW FHNW)

The initialization project has ended as of July 31, 2022. Work continues in the working groups. The didactics group is currently working on a research proposal entitled "Verändern üben: Transition der Designausbildung durch und hin zu zirkulären Praktiken" for the attention of the Swiss National Science Foundation, in order to investigate the question of how we, together with the professional field (representatives from professional practice), students and lecturers, can achieve a design education that can do justice to the important role of design in the transformation towards a sustainable society.

The initialization project instrument enabled university-wide networking on a topic that is urgent for many faculty, assistants and students. Precisely because sustainability topics are so comprehensive and have a strategic impact, they have the potential to integrate various stakeholders who want to actively shape the upcoming transformation.

Team HGK: Evelyne Roth, Meret Ernst
Funding: Initialization Project HGK
Duration 01.09.2021 until 31.08.2022

photocollage: _le surlendemain_e.roth