PHOTOGRAPHY
with Maisie Cousins
The aim of this workshop, led by photographer Maisie Cousins, is to use photography as a tool to broaden our powers of observation. During the week, students explored macro photography to create miniature and abstract worlds using everyday objects and accessories. This invites us to reflect: what else are we overlooking in our immediate environment?
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Douglas Mandry
This workshop brought together ECAL graduate artist Douglas Mandry, the Polaroid Foundation, and around thirty Bachelor Photography students. They had the exceptional opportunity to work with a camera that produces Polaroid films in a 40 × 60 cm format and weighs nearly 200 kg. This experience was made possible thanks to its operators, John Reuter and Harriet Browse, who introduced the students to the use of this unique device and the Polaroid Foundation team. Douglas Mandry provided the project’s artistic direction and supported the students in their experiments carried out directly with and on the films. The final result was presented as a collective exhibition on ECAL’s premises, revealing a particularly rich diversity of approaches and visions.
FINE ARTS
GRAPHIC DESIGN
with Joël Vacheron, Angelo Benedetto, Olympe Boutaghane, Francis Baudevin
Based on archives and experiences associated with Vibrations (1991–2013), this research analyses how the magazine's textual, graphic and photographic content provides insight into the challenges of communicating about popular music today.
with Patrick Keller, François Bovier, Erika Marthins
A comparative and practice-based study on the transformative effects at play in the digital and hybrid exhibition of a body of non-digital native artworks (some artworks by artist Nam June Paik serving as a mean of understanding).
FINE ARTS
FINE ARTS
MA CI
with Federico Nicolao
A collective exploration of the new relations between contemporary writing and artistic practice.
with Maxwell Ashford
This project develops design for recycling textile-based goods, one of the most damaging waste streams, using contemporary toolsets to dismantle products into pure fractions.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Léa Corin
Neither Fully Free, Nor Fully Captive explores the theme of day parole. Through a video installation and a book, this project archives and documents the activities of an association dedicated to reintegration. The projection, conceived as an emotional archive, combines experimental videos with sound testimonies from individuals on day parole supported by the association, revealing the complexity of this transition. The book, as a complement, adopts a documentary and sensitive approach, blending stories and visual creations. This project transcends graphic form to foster social dialogue and shed light on an essential yet often overlooked issue.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Hugo Scholl
MODULAT is a variable typeface designed around the concept of a musical visualizer. Starting from a neutral design, it branches out into multiple character sets, each allowing adaptation to different graphic and sonic worlds. Its variation axes enable it to adjust to a wide range of display formats, making it suitable for use across various digital platforms. Conceived as a modular tool, it questions how a typeface can accompany music while maintaining visual coherence. The project combines formal experimentation with a search for graphic adaptability.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Flora Hayoz
FACE À FACE is an exploration of loneliness through two mediums: dance and graphic design. This project brings together two practices to give shape to a hybrid creation. On one hand, a choreographic piece co-choreographed with Gaia Menchini, centred on states of loneliness and then captured on video. The second medium is a publication that extends the piece. By questioning the book as an object, it is designed to be read by two people and becomes a tool for dialogue and listening. The publication thus diverts from its usual uses, creating a sensory experience. The two media interact with each other, inviting us to experience solitude both in movement and in the sharing of reading. Thus, FACE À FACE offers an experience where solitude becomes the starting point for an encounter.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Emilie Müller
It is good to believe that the library is resilient. Not as a relic of the past, but as a presence that reinvents itself, oscillating between the tangible and the intangible. It's not a question of denying the digital, nor of clinging to our yellowed pages. But to understand that if we accept the library as a moving space, an organism that mutates with the times, then its future may not be so bleak. My diploma is a non-linear immersive library, conceived as a virtual house. Each piece evokes one of six themes from the Jan Michalski Foundation's Varia collection. In the form of a web interface, the project celebrates the serendipity inherent in physical libraries, while questioning how digital technology can translate the book experience.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Eliot Dubi
At the individual level, we can neither predict nor prevent the next disaster; we can only arm ourselves with the right reflexes to face it. JUST IN CASE is a website that gathers, through four scenarios — large wildfires, dam failures, industrial accidents and earthquakes — the key actions to remember when everything turns upside down. A clear tree-like navigation, concise texts and flat-style illustrations keep learning accessible without resorting to sensationalism. A triptych of posters promotes the site to the wider public. Designed for a generation flooded with anxiety-fuelled alerts, the project turns worry into simple, immediate actions — just in case.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Diego Steiner
Hybrid Modules explores the link between traditional craftsmanship and contemporary technologies through the creation of a 3D-printed modular typographic tool for use with a manual letterpress. Designed on a grid, the modular alphabet becomes a set of physical dies, which can be inserted by hand into the press. The slow, repetitive process becomes an integral part of the visual language, making visible the time and care of the gesture. A series of A2 posters promotes a series of fictitious conferences entitled “ART, CRAFT & TECHNOLOGY - Guests in Switzerland”.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Delphine Brantschen
What Remains to Be Stitched is an interactive website shaped as a memory palace. Through her mother's oral accounts, the graphic designer weaves together Brazil's past into 3D icons and narrative fragments. No objects or images have been preserved from this life — only words. These words are my only inheritance. But what remains when even she no longer remembers them? Blending graphic design, modeling, point clouds and spatial storytelling, the project explores a poetic form of transmission, stitching memories to preserve a fragile link between memory, culture and identity.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Cyprien Valenza
Patterna is an experimental variable typeface designed around two axes: Weight and Weaving. Inspired by Cassandre's Bifur from the 1930s and the arrangement of threads on Jacquard looms, Patterna is based on a rigorous grid that structures shapes and spacing. Its modular layering system allows for graphic experimentation with variations, making each composition dynamic. Numerous alternates reinforce its formal richness. Patterna challenges fashion conventions by offering a modular, dense typeface designed as both a graphic tool and a writing system.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Coraline Beyeler
5R is a documentary book explores the contrast between urban and rural agriculture, focusing on developments driven by new generations. It addresses issues related to pollution as well as social, health, and economic challenges.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Lidia Molina González
It all started with taking a break. A pause. A moment alone in a shared space: quiet, ordinary, a little strange. Toilets might not be the first place you’d look for big ideas, but that’s why we chose them. Toilet Break uses this overlooked space to explore how we live together, take space, and connect. This first issue is about in-betweens: between public and private, inside and outside. It gathers voices from Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, across generations and practices. A place where ideas circulate freely, where serious things can be said with a wink. A collective and personal space to test new editorial forms, listen more carefully, and believe in detours as a way forward. To take, quite literally, a moment to reflect and sit with things.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Paul Paturel
Grime Index is an interactive VJ-ing project that centralizes, visualizes, and enables navigation through iconic moments of grime — a chaotic genre born on London’s pirate airwaves. By turning audio data into visual identity and live signage, the project makes a performance-based, oral, and improvised culture more readable. Designed for both newcomers and longtime fans, it is built around three interchangeable modules — MC, instrumental, and lyrics — honoring the culture of sampling, MCing, and mixing. Diarization, transcription, dynamic typography, and real-time effects combine to reveal grime’s living and navigable memory.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Candice Aepli
Brindille et Azilise invite you to imagine children's space differently, by offering a lively, playful universe in their bedrooms. Here, the story is not read between the pages, but lies on the floor and climbs up the windows. It slips under an arm. It tucks in dreams. It's a whole world at children's level, where ecosystems come to life through furniture, transforming everyday life into a playground for exploration. Le jardin, collection no. 1 The gardener has slipped seeds into the soil, the bright sun warms the petals, the mouse nibbles on the sly, and in this corner full of life, everyone is busy and smiling.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Marc Facchinetti
The Swiss Climate Report is an editorial design project that explores climate change through data. Based on recent meteorological records, put into perspective with historical averages sometimes dating back more than 150 years, the book is supported by plugins custom-developed for InDesign. These tools translate scientific data such as temperatures, UV radiation and Dobson units into typographic variations and ASCII forms. This experimental approach offers an alternative reading of climate information. The project offers a raw and precise computer graphics perspective.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Mathilde Driebold
This book exists for what remains of us—and perhaps, of you. Fragments of an intimate past inscribed in, and lost within, a social context that goes beyond us. This diploma project takes the form of an editorial narrative, blending personal stories and social archives. Through this work, I explore the traces left by addiction within a family setting, bringing individual and collective memory into dialogue. Ce qu'il reste de nous also demonstrates that graphic design can be used as a tool to question social realities, give shape to sensitive subjects, and break the silence.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Constance Mauler
My project explores the Club Kid scene. Born in the 1980s in New York, this movement emerged as a radical response to artistic and social elitism. Led by queer and marginalized individuals, it transformed nightlife into a space of freedom, resistance, and self-invention. This publication aim to create a dialogue between the original generation of Club Kids and the contemporary scene, to show how this movement continues to challenge norms, invent new codes, and assert liberated identities. An immersion into a flamboyant and deeply political subculture.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Alfredo Venti
Points de rencontre/Treffpunkte is an inclusive graphic system designed to make sociocultural resources more visible and accessible to people facing linguistic isolation, or to anyone seeking to join a social network. Inspired by educational tools used with non-native speakers, it combines pictograms, color coding, visual keywords, and modular signage. Installed at the entrances of community centers through interchangeable panels, and complemented by poster campaigns (print and web), it brings these structures into public view for those looking for a service, a network, or simply a welcoming place.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Amélie Bertholet
a room of our own is an editorial project born from the relationship between my flatmate, Flavia, and myself. This book explores how a relationship lives and evolves within a shared space: our apartment. Often seen as a transitional phase, cohabitation here becomes a long-term space of emancipation and sisterhood. Nurtured by feminist references—beginning with its title, borrowed from "A Room of One’s Own" by Virginia Woolf—the project questions the place of women within spaces of creation and intimacy. Through symmetry and collection, the book translates the experience of a lived space into an editorial object. The layout's grid, drawn from the apartment’s floor plan, creates shifts in scale and layout to reflect the transformation of 3D space into the 2D printed page.
PHOTOGRAPHY
by Mirielle Alina Rohr
Girls Manufactured is a series of five ceramic vases, each representing a social media–driven aesthetic identity such as the Tradwife or Femme Fatale. These identities commodify femininity through strict visual and lifestyle codes that often lean towards conservative ideals and pleasing the male gaze. The photographer generated images with AI using datasets that I tied to each identity and integrated her own face to reflect her dual role as viewer and target scrolling through social media. The images I then transferred onto the vases using a technique that merges image and clay. The vases reference femininity through containment and decoration, while their form, based on Panathenaic amphorae, once awarded to male victors in ancient Greece, links ancient symbols of patriarchy to today's curated ideals.
PHOTOGRAPHY
by Francesca Bergamini
When male desire turns into violence, it often begins with the objectification of the female body. Pretty in Pink reclaims those bodies: low-res thumbnails of 3D nude female models—created by male designers for digital porn, idealized and passive—are altered using the same 3D tools that shaped them. The curves stop seducing. They become hostile, almost threatening. 3D-printed at life-size, these figures stand like anti-monuments, exposing outdated power. Installed as a narrative path, from glossy pink columns to a white-on-white final piece, the viewer moves through stages of desire, distortion, and fear. What was once virtually consumed by the male gaze now returns with physical weight, uncensored presence, and resistance.
PHOTOGRAPHY
by Jose Martin Martinez
Briefly after leaving his country, the photographer met his first friends, Serhii and Yelyzaveta, two Ukrainian teenagers, and past lovers, forced to flee together the Russian occupation of Ukraine. Thus, a two year passage begun, with the trials and tribulations that come from love, death, war and solitude. L'Eternité Reste (Eternity Remains) is a documentation, at times abstract, at times literal, often cinematographic, of this story. An unapologetic coming of age story, released from the idealized, fantastic and vulgar narratives showcased in Hollywood and social media. This book functions as an "exchange currency" of sorts against the distorted social apparatus of "reality". Furthermore, the book, pretends to leave an indelible record of this "love story", inextricably linked to a contemporary historical conflict.
PHOTOGRAPHY
by Nabarun Gogoi
In this short film, the photographer used a CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) avatar to address and question contemporary notions of masculinity and the complex relationship it shares with love. Inspired by the photographer's own apprehensions related to connecting with other men, the short film uncovers the subtle yet forceful indoctrination of masculine perceptions of power and control. These perceptions clash vehemently with the vulnerability that comes with loving another and the emotions it evokes, thus condemning men to an internal prison of shame and self-betrayal. Created using a gaming engine, the film aims to confront this dilemma and hints at the need to adopt a more nuanced version of masculinity - one where the self is no longer compromised to cater to the insecurities of the many.
PHOTOGRAPHY
by Riccardo Androni
Exhaustion is a critical and ironic response to the performance-driven society the photographer inhabits — one that demands constant motion, visibility, and productivity. Through absurd and site-specific gestures in public spaces, he confronts machines of efficiency and elevation with deliberate resistance. The photographer climbs down an escalator, blocks a door with his head, bends to stay in frame. These futile acts follow a strict protocol and expose the tragic emptiness behind endless self-performance. With dry humor and physical endurance, Exhaustion seeks to unmask a system that rewards conformity and erases meaning — until all that remains is exhaustion.
PHOTOGRAPHY
by Min Dai
Rate My Cake is a project about hunger — for sugar, for attention, for love. It is an attempt to stay with that hunger. To let it speak – not in language, but in images. The project is realised with artificial intelligence, although the word ‘realised’ seems too simplistic here. The machine and the photographer coexisted, reflected each other. It was like whispering secrets into a dark well and watching strange, sweet shapes emerge. The cakes in the images are not real. They’re too soft, too glossy, too wrong in just the right way. They’re overlit, undercooked, melting. They seem to wait for something too – approval, attention, maybe love.
PHOTOGRAPHY
by Visvaldas Morkevicius
Ergot is a toxic fungus used as a metaphor for digital intoxication. Drawing on psychopolitics, simulacra, and techno-feudalism, this work explores how identity, pleasure, and power are distorted under platform capitalism. It constructs a pixel world of hypermasculine avatars, stylised violence, and dopamine-fuelled objects using AI, CGI, photogrammetry, and glitch. Vapes, crystals, and supplements reflect commodified desire, while dancing police and custom weapons expose gamified violence. Realised as a triptych of three 110×250 cm plexiglass panels, the piece mirrors the seductive toxicity it critiques.
PHOTOGRAPHY
by Daniel Martinez
Flowing from an Alpine glacier to the Mediterranean Sea, the Rhône River runs through ice caves, forests, cities and industrial sites. It sustains ecosystems, defines geographies and connects cultures across space and time. However, the boundless flux of the world’s waters today faces increasing stories of tragedy and collapse. Climate change doesn’t manifest only on a material level but also overwhelms the emotional dimension of human life. Today, the psychological toll of environmental crisis amplifies states of eco-anxiety and solastalgia, triggered by lived experiences, mediated imagery and narratives of apocalyptic breakdown. A River Has No Shore reflects on the distress caused by climate change and its representation by looking at the water along the Rhône River in its endless forms.
PHOTOGRAPHY
by Eva Manuela Rivas Bao
Starting from the trial of former Italian president Berlusconi, An Italian Story examines Italian-Moroccan model and aspiring sports journalist Imane Fadil. Attending the ex-president’s parties, she was a key witness, confessing abuse of power and underage prostitution at his residence in Arcore, near Milan. In 2019, she died at 34, weeks after announcing her upcoming book. Berlusconi reduced the representation of women in Italy to few pixels. The book manipulates "photographic leftovers" and documentary pictures at Imane’s Milan house with AI, aiming to recreate missing images that Fadil shared in court. Deconstructing "an Italian story" - famouspropaganda zine of the ex-president - to reconstruct another Italian story, a collective memory from the rubble of the "Italian failed Me Too" (2010-2023).
PHOTOGRAPHY
by Elisa Azevedo
Daydream is an intimate exploration of sexuality, embodiment, and the search for connection in a world increasingly shaped by performance and consumption. The photographic series began with an investigation of highly sexualized spaces — environments where the body often appears fragmented, mediated, and as a representation. Present, yet absent, lingering only as a trace of desire. By reenacting some of these gestures herself, the photographer embodies a role and expectation that she cannot naturally fulfill. This performative process reveals the dissonance between imposed ideals and personal reality. Through photography, feelings of loneliness, inadequacy, and vulnerability are confronted — but also curiosity, longing, and the wish for a more sincere relation to her own body and her own sense of intimacy.
PHOTOGRAPHY
by Doyoung Kim
The work Flattened Roughness explores war image consumption and resulting guilt. The photographer collects and prints images of death then lick and absorb them physically, confronting the emotional and physical distance created by media. Suicide drones’ cameras constantly calculate distance to humans for destruction. In this process, the distance between humans is forgotten. To overcome this distance, he brings the images into my body. This act, where intimacy and brutality coexist, transforms voyeurism into mourning and care, confronting my lost humanity. Through sensory performance, he bridges the gap between himself and mediated death, exploring the clash of dulled emotion and sensation. This confessional, physically exhausting work explores alternative sensory approaches for the recovery of broken humanity.
DESIGN FOR LUXURY & CRAFTSMANSHIP
by Erwann Harrison
Passionate about horology, I designed a watch case and bracelet featuring moving lugs that allow the timepiece to wrap comfortably around any sized wrist. Made from titanium, the design aims to fit a rugged, playful and elegant aesthetic and remind the wearer that every second counts. This continues with the hands and dial, especially through the outer. After exploring what it would take to bring the watch to market, I also created a brand and promotional strategy selling a lifestyle as well as the watch. This includes a specific mission of high quality, comfort, and making every second count, for a specific target audience of people that are in control of their lives, all compiled into a magazine-style publication.
DESIGN FOR LUXURY & CRAFTSMANSHIP
by Yang Yao Chun
This series of lamps explores how tangible interactions can make everyday actions, such as turning on the lights, more meaningful and playful. When the user gently rotates the lampshade, the light gradually illuminates, subtly transforming the space's atmosphere. By introducing an engaging, physical gesture to activate the lamp, the act of lighting becomes less mechanical and more ceremonial. The bedside lamp invites a quiet interaction before sleep. As the user slowly rotates the spherical lampshade, the light gradually emerges, creating a calming ritual that helps the user unwind. The wall lamp, meanwhile, responds to presence, a simple interaction activates a warm glow, turning a daily transition into a mindful encounter.
DESIGN FOR LUXURY & CRAFTSMANSHIP
by Yoojin Chung
Sillage is an olfactory kinetic installation that explores scent as a post-digital, embodied experience. A suspended veil of organza moves through a series of ephemeral gestures, catching traces of fragrance and releasing them into its environment. In a world dominated by visual and digital saturation, Sillage highlights smell as a uniquely physical sense — immersive, time-based, and eluding digital capture. The project combines spatial design, choreographed movement, and scent dispersion with material experimentation. It investigates how fragrance, motion, and form can activate perception and presence, offering a sensory encounter that expands how we engage with space beyond the visual and virtual abstraction.
DESIGN FOR LUXURY & CRAFTSMANSHIP
by Xinyi Jiang
The project originates from an exploration of flexible plywood and veneer. I experimented with natural methods such as interweaving and compression to control the material, aiming to preserve the aesthetic form brought by its inherent tension. The contrast between rigid, static solid wood and the fluid, dynamic curves of bent wood establishes a quiet dialogue between stillness and motion. These opposing states are not in conflict but exist in delicate equilibrium — a visual and tactile expression of tension held in pause.
DESIGN FOR LUXURY & CRAFTSMANSHIP
by Laura Clauscen
Centred around the act of changing from inside shoes to outside shoes and vise-verser, Here, There & In Between is a scenography of footwear and imagery, exploring how we perceive and experience space through sensory rituals, movement and material artifacts. Two pairs of shoes, situated in an intentional ‘liminal-zone’, function as both metaphor and prop. Marked with a new pattern language on the soles and inner lining, they serve to heighten our awareness of the transition between one world and another; private to public, interior to exterior; both physical and psychological. The scenography includes a research publication, containing diary entries and plans for additional furniture items. The publication itself becomes a dynamic object or 'furnishing' within the scene.
DESIGN FOR LUXURY & CRAFTSMANSHIP
by Lena Heinrich
The start of this project was the idea to create objects out of a ‘straw bundle’. Exploring possible material options, the work entailed an in depth review of different straw fibres, their value chains and setting within global environmental and social dynamics. The main piece of this work is a research book based on literature reviews, field trips, and expert interviews. It uncovers truths about traditional practices, highlights shortcomings in current material use, and proposes new ways of exploring straw as a viable material. The practical part of this project focused on experimentation with rye straw and testing techniques within the limits of working with a ‘straw bundle’, leading to the development of prototypes demonstrating the material’s potential in contemporary design.
DESIGN FOR LUXURY & CRAFTSMANSHIP
by Tommy Jiang
Syntax Supellex explores how meaning can emerge through combination, drawing inspiration from the structure and logic of the Chinese language. It consists of three abstract furniture objects, each with open-ended functionality. Individually, they remain ambiguous and abstract; when combined, their function becomes specific—reflecting how Chinese characters refine meaning through compounding. Influenced by my cultural background and the structural principles of Hanzi, the project is realised in wood, metal, and soft upholstery—each representing a milestone in the evolution of Chinese script. Together, the pieces create a balance of solidity, softness, and elegance. The result is a collection of flexible, expressive forms that communicate through form, rooted in linguistic thought.
DESIGN FOR LUXURY & CRAFTSMANSHIP
by Bom Noh
Plastic Love reinterprets the sculptural gestures of the Murano chandelier—a historical icon of luxury—to question how we define craftsmanship and value in contemporary context. Combining digital tools with the trace of the hand, the work emphasises the irregularities and physical presence that resist automation. Plastic, long associated with mass production and ecological harm, is reframed not as a cheap substitute but as a site of embodied labour and material critique. Through repetition, imperfection, and time, it gains a new kind of beauty. By deliberately choosing a material often dismissed, the project unsettles inherited hierarchies and challenges our assumptions about refinement—demonstrating how design can function not as a solution, but as a question.
DESIGN FOR LUXURY & CRAFTSMANSHIP
by Coline Schenck
Glazed earthenware pieces, intended for tableware and daily use, are developed through a process combining mental well-being and sensory design. Studies in neuroscience and neuroaesthetics are analyzed to identify shapes, colors, and textures that promote calm. This data is first translated visually into pastel compositions, then transformed into volumes adapted to the function of each object. The graphic composition seeks to visually stimulate while minimizing cognitive load, while the volume invites attentive tactile exploration. In a daily environment marked by sensory overload, these objects aim to reintroduce calm by turning the ordinary into a soothing refuge.
DESIGN FOR LUXURY & CRAFTSMANSHIP
by Emilie Heger
The aim of this research project is to bring together the earliest tools from the Palaeolithic era with contemporary gemstone cutting. While flint tools were essential to the survival of early humans, the techniques and gestures involved in stone-cutting have evolved into a particularly refined art, a symbol of wealth and power. Today, the only purpose of working precious stones, perfected by modern tools and technologies, is to maginify the reflection of light in order to produce aesthetic artefacts that are freed from their function. Typology of the Cut is a curatorial project that explores the duality between function and expression in relation to stone-cutting.
DESIGN FOR LUXURY & CRAFTSMANSHIP
by Patrick Storey
Design For Rest is a speculative research project exploring how design can prompt and ritualise rest in an age of constant digital engagement. Through design, writing and experimentation, it questions how we might reframe rest not as recovery, but as an intentional act. It proposes three outputs: Glasses for the Night, red-lens eyewear crafted from 0.5mm stainless steel; Interval, a poetic device using chromatography to signal rest intervals; and Phase, a prompting switch that disconnects Wi-Fi, reshaping night-time routines. Together, they form a system of tools to help reclaim attention, presence, and sleep.
DESIGN FOR LUXURY & CRAFTSMANSHIP
by Sebastian Renga
Materia Futura reflects on the relationship between ancient forms and new technologies. The chair draws from primitive structures shaped by time, need, and clarity. This project was developed with Econit, a cellulose-based composite used in theater sets for its strength, lightness, and texture. This material enabled to reinterpret an archaic shape through digital modeling and manual refinement. The geometry feels instinctive but is carefully designed. This is not about nostalgia, but about how traditional forms can evolve through contemporary tools, and how material choices embody meaning in a time of overproduction.
DESIGN FOR LUXURY & CRAFTSMANSHIP
by Jérémie Arpa
Developed from a research on vegetal morphogenesis, Aurea is a mechanically dimmable table lamp that unites geometric precision with organic forms. Made entirely from 3D printed bioplastic (PLA), Aurea offers 360° lighting variation through its modular shade. Manually turning the rotating crown activates an epicyclic gear system, whose satellite wheels are individually mounted on the six lampshade reflectors. This system allows both illumination intensity and perceived light temperature adjustment, by modifying the orientation and distance of the reflectors in relation to the central LED bulb.
PRODUCT DESIGN
by Natsumi Komoto
Baya is a lounge chair inspired by animal nests. Starting with the question “Why do humans need to create?”, I explored instinctive structures built by animals—nests where function and form merge, offering a pure model of creation beyond culture and ornament. Baya’s CNC-bent stainless steel frame is imagined as branches, hand-wrapped with leather strips to form a personal nest that blends industrial precision with primal gesture. Leather, used since ancient times, softens metal’s rigidity and symbolizes the deep bond between nature and humans. Its enveloping form welcomes varied postures and moments of reflection, while the reconfigurable design fosters long-term care over short use. Baya quietly asks what sustainability means—physically, emotionally, and philosophically.
PRODUCT DESIGN
by Louis Bosnjak
Traditionally, upholstered furniture is made from a mix of materials like wood, metal, polyurethane (PU) foam, glue, and fasteners—forming a complex composite that is nearly impossible to recycle. PU foam, the industry standard for comfort, is especially difficult to process and often ends up in landfills. Repose rethinks this system by replacing synthetic components with fully biodegradable, organic materials. Combining a cantilever wooden structure with flexible wood fiber panels, hemp cord webbing, kapok fibers, natural latex, and expanded cork, the project creates furniture that is comfortable, durable, and designed for biodegradability—offering a coherent, circular alternative to conventional upholstery.
DESIGN FOR LUXURY & CRAFTSMANSHIP
by Aina Wang
In the 19th century, Prussian citizens gave up their gold to support the war, receiving cast-iron jewellery engraved ‘Gold gab ich für Eisen’ - ‘I gave gold for iron’. Berlin iron, an alloy of iron and carbon, covered in a layer of patinated black lacquer, was born of a moment when personal sacrifice became collective identity. This project revives that gesture by concealing the gold at the heart of the iron, like a buried memory. Inspired by military insignia and Gothic geometry, the piece evokes reverence and loss. Designed for movement, it transforms into ten forms, from brooch to pendant to belt, linking the ritual of the past with the wear and tear of the present.