PRODUCT DESIGN
with Thélonious Goupil
During this one-week workshop led by Thélonious Goupil, edits were made to a ‘drop false ceiling’ in Bar Gala Lausanne. By hacking the system, playing with existing elements such as lighting or ventilators, the outdate ceiling was given new life without the need for full renovation.
PRODUCT DESIGN
with Reed Kram
No Signal! Is the the outcome of an exploratory one-week workshop completed for, and now exhibited in, the Mudac’s exhibition ‘We Will Survive’, which delves into the world of ‘Preppers.’ Guided by designer Reed Kram, students from the MA Product Design program, worked in pairs to create solutions for a hypothetical scenario in which phones no longer work, the internet is down, and grid electricity is unavailable. Faced with this breakdown of modern infrastructure, their mission was to reimagine how we might fulfill one of humanity's most essential needs—communication.
PRODUCT DESIGN
with Chris Kabel
Like Robinson Crusoe scavenged the wrecked ship for materials to build his home, First Year Master Product Design students, guided by Chris Kabel, were invited to delve into the flotsam of their creative minds for this open workshop. The workshop began with collecting, organizing, and analyzing creative flotsam and jetsam to create a self-portrait as a designer. Unrealized projects, obsessions and fascinations, irritations, vague dreams, (bad) jokes, and ideas too weird to talk about—all these resided within a designer's mind. Beginnings already existed: inspiring photos on phones, inviting materials, first ideas hastily scribbled down, quick sketches on paper, half-baked assemblages, or flimsy maquettes. These fragments and particles were analyzed to discover the kind of designer each participant was, extracting a direction for development during the week. This process of analysis, ideation, and translation, including the ‘end result,’ became visible as an island, shaped and populated by each individual's design process. It featured fragile beginnings, iterations, and the choices made along the way, culminating in a final conclusion shaped by material samples, shape research, 3D sketches, the development of a mechanism, a campaign, a film scenario, or whatever else was distilled from the initial flotsam.
PRODUCT DESIGN
with Christophe Guberan, Camille Blin
The New Final Form is the result of a cross-disciplinary workshop run by the 1st year students in the Product Design Master's programme. Working with Ceramaret, a company based in Bôle that specialises in new ceramic manufacturing processes, the students imagined today's electrical sockets and switches. Our daily habits and our relationship with these devices have changed considerably over the last few decades, particularly with the battery-powered appliances that surround us. Thanks to the development of new technologies and new manufacturing processes, and to the properties of ceramics: good resistance to heat and pressure, and very good electrical insulation, the students came up with a series of original proposals rethinking the Feller electrical socket of today, an icon of Swiss design established by Max Bill in 1946.
PRODUCT DESIGN
with Camille Blin, Maxwell Ashford, Anthony Guex, Anniina Koivu
Fogo, nicknamed ‘a rock in the ocean’ is a small island situated off Newfoundland, Canada. As a part of a larger on-going semester project, 2nd Year Master Product Design students of ECAL, completed a short, fun, few day workshop, utilising one of the most abundant resources on the island - wind. Working in collaboration with the ShoreFast Foundation - an organisation working in numerous avenues to create a sustainable economy on the island, students developed plastic free kites. Fogo Island has the intention of becoming completely plastic free in the coming years and as their tourist numbers increase memorabilia of this special place are in higher demand. The developed kites are therefore to be made on the island and intended for the Fogo Island Workshop gift shop. Using Birch Wood, Ripstop Organic Cotton and hemp fibre string the students created a range of designs, taking reference from the unique features of the island.
PRODUCT DESIGN
with Christophe Guberan
"Rethinking the Wheel" – a series of projets on steering wheels. Will we be controlling our cars through voice recognition in future? With a soft toy? How about a pizza box? The digital transformation and electrification of cars has opened up a world of possibilities at the wheel. MINI’s design team and ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne have collaborated closely on a sophisticated design study to develop unexpected ideas for the future of steering wheels. Under the direction of ECAL tutors Camille Blin and Christophe Guberan, Master students in Product Design have addressed the topic and come up with spectacular designs, developing, improving and ultimately achieving their vision in ongoing consultation with Christian Bauer, Head of Interior Design at MINI. The result: nine innovative and surprising designs that question existing shapes and materials – and, as such, the way in which we might interact with our cars in the future – with a lot of creativity.
PRODUCT DESIGN
with Augustin Scott de Martinville
The objective of this project is to facilitate access to quality products from local agriculture. Terre Vaudoise is launching a new concept of Self-service 7/7. The 1st year students presented an innovative concept for the exterior and interior.
PRODUCT DESIGN
with Wieki Somers
From 15 June to 12 October at Lausanne Jardins 2019, discover some thirty gardens, including three projects created by ECAL Product Design Master students following a workshop with the Dutch designer Wieki Somers . The three projects presented on the Terrasse de Bellefontaine are: Le Point (Timothée Mion, Fabien Roy, Leonardo Vianello): Perched atop the roof of a car park above the level of the street, The Bellefontaine terrace is inconspicuous and little-used. To attract the attention and incite passers-by to discover this hidden garden, a sail unfolds every time the car park’s air vent is activated, like a landmark up in the sky. The blast that comes from the bowels of the earth propels the piece of fabric that twirls around in the wind. Air is the invisible link between all the layers of this place and Le Point makes it visible. The Nocturnal Garden (Jeffery Lambert, Lorenz Noelle, Mathilde Lafaille): Sculptures during the day, stage directors at night: a series of lampshades bring the Bellefontaine terrace to life as night falls. They transform the park, diverting the rays of existing lights onto natural elements for a new experience of the garden. Each reflector creates little scenes with a dramatic interplay between light and nature that varies according to the wind and the rain. Entrance (Samuel Lodetti, Benjamin Bichsel, Jingxiang Zhang): There is something fascinating about gazing into water. Through the transparency of this element, hidden worlds appear and one can get lost in their infinity. Entrance plays on this fascination. Thanks to an optical effect, the park is connected to the various levels of the car park. The small fountain transforms into a bottomless abyss of stratified storeys, and visitors are invited to dive into this endless world. https://lausannejardins.ch/en/
PRODUCT DESIGN
with Camille Blin, Christophe Guberan
In partnership with the 3D printing company Formlabs, ECAL Master Product Design students present a range of innovative everyday life objects, produced through a print farm within the exhibition and sold directly on site. Projects from ECAL faculty and alumni are also available. The concept was imagined by Camille Blin, head of the Master Product Design, and Christophe Guberan, ECAL tutor. ECAL has turned Spazio Orso 16, a 17th century Milanese palazzo, into a contemporary production site and retail shop inspired by a new vision of digital manufacturing. Lately, most of the product design research into 3D printing has been focusing on new technologies and the shapes they can generate. The idea of this project is to present digital manufacturing as an industrial production tool thanks to a print farm composed of numerous machines printing the same pieces simultaneously. “ECAL Digital Market” offers functional and well-designed everyday objects, created by Master Product Design students as well as by a selection of ECAL-related designers (faculty members and alumni). The project looks into the possibilities of production on demand. It examines the changing environment of manufacturing processes, it emphasizes how fast and transparent today’s design industry could become, and experiments with new design details that are too intricate to achieve with traditional manufacturing techniques. Finally, “ECAL Digital Market” highlights the role of the designer in this new production cycle. Thanks to the 3D printers and know-how provided by Formlabs, a large variety of objects such as combs, tape dispensers, mechanical pencils, shoehorns, coat hooks, scissors, spinning tops, shelves and many more are produced and sold on site by the students. The digital files of the objects can also be purchased online: www.ecal-digital-market.ch
PRODUCT DESIGN
with Camille Blatrix
PRODUCT DESIGN
with Christian Spiess
PRODUCT DESIGN
with Nathalie Du Pasquier
The curation of an exhibition shapes the viewers perspective of the objects presented. In this workshop, overseen by Nathalie Du Pasquier, each team was tasked with creati ng a unique way of presenting everyday objects. Through the contexts of the presentations, the objects take on new meanings and their inherent banality is brought into question. 12 students from the HEAD in Geneva and 19 from ECAL Master of Product Design worked together in 6 groups. At the end of the week, the results were exhibited at the gallery ELAC.
PRODUCT DESIGN
with Brynjar Sigurðarson
Each year some fifteen whales get stranded on the coasts of Iceland. A whole local tradition is being kept alive around the bones of these gentle giants, often used in their raw state but rarely worked on by designers. In January 2013, 17 ECAL Product Design Master students went to the Iceland Academy of the Arts in Reykjavik to attend a workshop led by Icelandic designer Brynjar Sigurðarson. According to him “the idea was to collect various types of bones on the beach, but also shark skin or teeth, or even bits of plastic waste. From this starting point, the ECAL students who had come from all corners of the earth were supposed to draw on the atmosphere of this particular environment to create objects”. From the skull of a Minke whale repainted like a car body to cutters using shark’s teeth, via ship models whose centreboard is made from whale vertebrae, masks put together using the remains of marine animals and contemporary materials, and including a geometric decorative object made of bone and placed on a pedestal, this surprisingly poetic selection is the fruit of a reflection on contrasts between the old and the new and the meeting of the primitive and the progressive.
PRODUCT DESIGN
with Tomas Kral
For its 14th edition, Langenthal Designers’ Saturday offers carte blanche to the ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne. It provides the setting for the ECAL to present its exhibition entitled “Low-Tech Factory”, a selection of machines designed by Bachelor’s and Master’s students of Industrial Design and Product at a workshop led by designers Chris Kabel and Tomás Král. At Langenthal, factories are omnipresent.For this carte blanche, it seemed to us natural to ask students to look at showcasing the manufacturing process of an object, from the machine to the finished product. They therefore experimented with simple and ingenious shaping methods such as moulding, thermoforming and knitting to obtain finished products. “Low-Tech Factory” tackles the subject of automatic production beloved by designers, bringing together six entertaining machines which throughout the exhibition produce mirrors, hats, sacks, toys, lamps, and even popcorn!
PRODUCT DESIGN
with Alexis Georgacopoulos
Toys especially design for kids aboard airplanes. Project in collaboration with Swiss airline (CH).