25 Apr Gwendolyn Kulick presented her paper at NEXT
The conference Design for NEXT was organized by the European Academy of Design from 12th to 14th April 2017 at the Faculty of Architecture of Sapienza University in Rome, located beautifully at the edge of Villa Borghese, Rome’s largest public park. It was divided into nine tracks – Aesthetics, Economy, Education, Environment, Health, Industry, Society, Technology, & Thinking – in which more than 500 participants presented and discussed their very diverse work in the design field. Accordingly the spectrum of topics and formats spanned widely from implemented case studies to the development of theoretical frameworks for design research and practice. Young students presented alongside senior faculty and researchers, and especially the event’s international character led to fruitful exchanges.
Gwendolyn Kulick, PhD-Student of Prof. Dr. Brigitte Wolf, presented her paper ‘Adding plus value to development aid projects through design strategy: experiences from Pakistan’, in which she outlined findings from my PhD research about craft projects in Pakistan’s grassroots empowerment sector. The research took place largely through action research and close engagement with different stakeholders, which raised the interest in how development aid and design practice historically have been interlinked, parallels of both fields and the question which complementing value design can potentially add. The feedback was very supportive of both, the topic and also the research framework. Naturally mostly design professionals from the fields of craft heritage and from social innovation engaged in the subsequent conversation.