The Mobile Workshop Group

We are a group of designers that build future scenarios on how we can live together in new ways. For design colleges and institutes we develop workshops that on a very practical and hands on way engage students, and later visitors of the exhibition in a location. We make you look to a place and think about this in a different way, to discover what is there and to invent what is needed.

The Expanding Role of the Designer

Today we see that the role of the designer is constantly evolving and expanding; from designing objects to designing systems and services.  Products are no longer seen as the end goal but can be used as a tool to facilitate social innovation.  We see that more and more companies, governments and designers become aware of the value this role can add to the development of systems and services.

Designing the process

The general attitude to how we want students to work during our workshop is focussed on research. As a designer you are a creative, your qualities are to approach situations, systems and objects from an other perspective. This means that also the way you work is part of your work. How do you research, even asking a simple question can be done in many ways with many different outcomes, but which one suits the situation, the project and the person your talking to?

Multidisciplinary

All designers are communicators.

Designers, architects, graphic designers, product designers, interaction designers, they are all creative people specialised in a different area that learned to think about a different scale. Together these qualities can form a great tool communicating the ideas of how we should live from the smallest thing to the landscape around us and how we do, live and think. In our workshops every team forms its own context. Different people wit different backgrounds make teams specialised in different areas creating different outcomes.

Local experts

An important thing for designers to realise is that they are usually outsiders for the situation they are working for. This is advantage to keep an overview and fresh perspective on the situation. But it also means that you will have to work together and learn from the experts in this situation to be able to know what is really going on. By involving the people in the situation you are working on you can create a real insight in the life of this situation and find yourself a place to experiment and prototype. These people are the experts.

Workshop concept

A workshop that turns into an exhibition, communicating process, concept and the importance of working with an open mind and broad view today.

Sharing the city

Our current workshop series is about sharing the city. A research of sharing in the city with the aim to design new ways of living together. How can we live together and use the space, time, objects, etc. in new ways. Looking at people; their systems, situations and services to improve the quality of life by changing, enhancing and inventing new ways for our daily lives.

Research

The students will perform their research partially on location and partially in a studio space. Every team has his own subject to focus on. These subjects are all actions of humans that are part of our daily life. The research topics are:

Leisure; Your time to be allowed, the time to do whatever you want.

Living; What are the situations that people are facing in their everyday lives, which actions do they do and what do they wish for.

Travel; Passage is the act or process of moving through, under, over, or past something on the way from one place to another.

Work; Can you make the city as your own studio or workshop together with the temporary and permanent residents?

The Mobile Workshop Group are:

Bas Kools MA (RCA),

http://www.baskools.com/

Nina Mrsnik MA (RCA),

http://www.lookthere.org/

So Hyun Kim MA (RCA),

http://www.lookthere.org/

Henny van Nistelrooy MA (RCA),

http://hennyvannistelrooy.com/

Contact us through:

themobileworkshopgroup@gmail.com

Taganskaya square is one of the biggest and most busy traffic squares in Moscow. Many people make their way past this place every day, some stay a while, some only seconds.

– View the presentation video

– Download the booklet

Trafalgar Square is a square in central London, England. With its position in the heart of London, one of the most famous squares in the United Kingdom and the world. At its centre is Nelson’s Column, which is guarded by four lion statues at its base. Statues and sculptures are on display in the square, including a fourth plinth displaying changing pieces of contemporary art, and it is a site of political demonstrations.

The name commemorates the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), a British naval victory of the Napoleonic Wars. The original name was to have been “King William the Fourth’s Square”, but George Ledwell Taylor suggested the name “Trafalgar Square”.

(wikipedia, yes, on 5 Sept 2009)

– View the presentation video

– Download the booklet

The first year interior Design students of the Ljubljana Academy of Design performed a research into sharing in the city to design new ways of living together. Creating a scenarios for the future of Preseren square in the heart of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Prešeren Square is the central square in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. A statue of the Slovene national poet France Prešeren with a muse stands in the centre of the square. The statue faces the window where Prešeren's "muse" used to live. There is a small statue on that building as well.