Can You Design Your Emigration? On Design and Emigration

What knowledge and skills do you need in order to successfully design your emigration? What role does design have in packing literally and symbolically your suitcase and further what role does it play in the process of integration into a new society? Can design help you to obtain a “new language” to bridge different cultural behaviors? This proseminar analyzes how did the experience of emigration (leaving your home country) and immigration (settling in a new country) influence and shape the career and works of prominent and less known architects and designers during the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. The exploration of these processes will be from socio-cultural perspective and in relation to current trends in politics and design. The language of the émigré designer and architect has a direct connection with modernity because of her/ his need to integrate experience of uprooting, and to make a conscious claim on integration through fashioning new perspectives on place(s) and identities, and further through contributing to cultural renewal of their new country. Methodologies used include design and art historical and socio-cultural as well as theories of cultural transfer and identity formations. The aims of this proseminar is to examine the role of design in relation to strategies of handling experience of emigration and exile as well as the relevance of the contributions of émigré architects’ and designers’ works and writings to political awareness in design, humanist design, and to public culture of debate on a global terrain.