In a superconnected world, we face superconnected challenges. Climate change is ruining our vision of a consumerist future. A new virus is forcing us to act local, while the virus itself is global.

As of the quick spread of the Virus COVID-19 we need to use all resources and abilities that we have in a new and efficient way. We need to adapt to a new situation and we need to make up for things that we took for given, but that become a privilege in the current situation. Some business models fade away. Others will rise.

As designers, we are great at creating new things from precarious situations. Design methodology, traditionally understood as planning has dominated our perception of design until now. However, designers have always been great at Improvisation. They can use ‚what is around', they combine available subsystems towards something new. They are using given things, ideas and materials. Improvisation is in every Open Design Project, but it's also essential in Industrial design. Improvisation, in another understanding, can also be a daily solution to solve day-to-day problems using makeshift arrangements.

The seminar will discuss different texts on improvisation from the design discourse as well as examples from Open Design, Exhibitions and industrial design processes. Improvisation is a way to participate, engage and open Design towards a multiplicity of actors and hybrid materials.

With texts and works by: Charles Jencks and Nathan Silver, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Sebastian Herkner, Annika Frye, Tamar Sahfir, Gary Peters, Daniel Martin Feige, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Nigel Cross, Zukunftsinsitut Frankfurt (...)