the art of the potato
location: zurich switzerland, 2024
context: starting day for the new students at the f+f school for art and design
idea: 25 students start a new phase of their lives at the beginning of their studies and the focus of the day is on potatoes in order to put down good roots early on. first the potatoes are packed in clay, then a fire is lit, in between a farmer gives insights into potato cultivation, then the baked potatoes are eaten together and in the afternoon there is speed dating and potato printing until the aperitif. the setting creates an atmosphere that encourages people to get to know each other and exchange ideas, expectations and wishes for the upcoming time together as students.
[images: f+f]
bouncy cheese
location: affoltern and langnau im emmental switzerland, 2023
context: participatory sculpture for emmentaler schaukäserei and regionalmuseum chüechlihus
idea: in our workshop with emmental school classes, one child sprayed a wonderfully coloured cheese and another had the idea of building a sofa entirely out of emmentaler. combining these concepts, the sprayed cheese is enlarged and made really soft and the cheese lounge is created, a three-dimensional, walk-on sofa. a cheerful, cozy sculpture that invites everyone to explore. children can climb and bounce, teenagers can hang out and socialize, adults can sit back and take a break from hiking in the beautiful hills while having an aperitif.
cheese workshop
location: langnau im emmental switzerland, 2022
context: workshop with kids of two local schools
idea: the emmental valley is not only home to world-famous cheese, but also home to a show dairy, a local museum and importantly, many children who grow up in this unique region. let's try to dive into their souls to find out what is on in the young emmental mind and how cheese fits into their everyday lives. in an open-ended lab with six tasks, participants discover new things that can be done with old cheese. how does it sound when the holes in the cheese become musical notes and which grafitti tag best represents your own village? the results serve as a pool of inspiration for the development of a participatory sculpture for the region.
urban interventions
location: bern switzerland, 2022
context: workshop with students of school for design bern biel
idea: the week starts with a walk in search of random compositions of objects and traces that could be interpreted as works of art created unwittingly by passers-by. each student then looks for a spot to add or subtract from and thereby overwrite it with a new vibe or function. both structural and performative interventions can be tried out as a strategy to temporarily enable a place to appear in a different light. at the end of the week, we visit and discuss the resulting interventions and then let them disappear right behind us.
[images: saya dür]
grand hotel
location: zurich switzerland, 2022
context: setting for a summer school workshop at f+f school for art and design
with participation of carolina cerchiai
idea: this summer you pack your bags with a big question for art or an unfinished project and instead of flying far away with your luggage, you check-in at the grand hotel summer school in zurich. to dive into a creative muddle of workshops, studios, sofas, lectures, bar stools and spontaneous discussions, a self-made “grand hotel” is conjured with simple means. a mini champagne pyramid, chandeliers drawn on balloons, false columns and a one-hole golf course set the mood for artistic experiments in togetherness.
brick loungers
location: zurich switzerland, 2021
context: workshop to build outdoor furniture for a schoolyard
collaboration with naomi eggli
idea: the workshop starts with the task of mapping everything the schoolyard has to offer. as yet unfulfilled wishes and needs of the school kids were dreamed up in utopian sketches. the fantasies are then reduced into forms commensurate with the use of lego blocks. the lego block forms are transformed into bricks, and four platforms of 1x1 m are slowly built up. 30 sacks of mortar, 380 bricks and a lot of muscle power are transformed into abstract lounge sculptures. reminiscent of benches, columns and pyramids, the outdoor furniture inspires an open, undefined use discovered by the young creators and their friends.
wayfinders
location: zurich switzerland, 2021
context: workshop to design a new wayfinding system for a school
collaboration with naomi eggli
idea: what are the most important spaces for a school? teachers' room and library? or much more a place to share secret videos? or the hidden bunker that is always locked? teenagers discuss their favorite fictional and real places and translate them into objects. in parallel the people most important to them and their characters are represented through animals. with just a few strokes, reduced sketches are put down on paper. these pictograms are blown up large, transferred to wooden panels and painted neon pink. together the objects and animals form a subjective, intuitive network of places and people, making the inner core of everyday school life visible to the outside world.
archipelago congress
location: basel switzerland, 2020
context: workshop with students of hyperwerk basel
idea: based on the concept of circular thinking, the students create their own fictional islands in groups. by getting to know the prevailing limitations of the island, conclusions can be drawn about specific ways of dealing with material, space and technology. as soon as the individual approaches and concepts are manifested in drawings, the islands unite to form a conglomerate. in the archipelago congress, a network of relationships between the heterogeneous islands is discursively negotiated while respecting and preserving the created identities.
labyrinth
location: wettingen switzerland, 2020
context: stage design workshop for tanz&kunst königsfelden
idea: dancers, musicians, writers and scenographers team up with young adults and kids to create a dance piece performed in an old monastery. this year the journey leads one into a labyrinth to investigate the characteristics and mindset of such a structure. to challenge the dancing bodies, a rectangular element is developed as a counterpart. the building blocks of the simple set design form an adaptive, multifunctional structure as a group. in its simplicity the stage offers an abstract set to be overwritten by the dancing body. due to covid-19 the project finds its final form in digital space.
white desert
location: zurich switzerland, 2020
context: experimental laboratory on future education at the f+f school for art and design
collaboration with talaya schmid and roland roos
idea: based on the thesis that two of three kids who are born today will eventually work in jobs that do not yet exist, a future school model is developed to be tested during two weeks with a hundred students. as covid-19 hits the world just at that time, the experiment takes the exceptional situation as an amplifier to break up the existing hierarchies and structures. students work from one hundred home-satellites on new perspectives for their thinking and acting, while they play back their output to the headquarters in the closed school. in the exclusion zone, a memorial for the crisis arises, a collective space where social concepts, responsibility and ownership is renegotiated. a project radio broadcasts the state of mind of the hundred to the rest of the school.
[images: goran basic]
ufo playground
location: zurich switzerland, 2019
context: workshop to design and build a playground
idea: twenty teenagers and twenty kindergarten kids form a taskforce to envision and realize a playground for their school. sketches and mock-ups of utopian dreams are analyzed and discussed to find a common theme for the design process. the older participants build a ufo as a shelter, a space shuttle to climb on, a galaxy to balance and a throne to play politics in a far away nation, while the young wildings fabricate alien masks, alien pets and a cockpit for the ufo. the imaginative world is created out of recycled wood from the waste of the «unfluencer» installation.
rough wood
location: zurich switzerland, 2018
context: summer school workshop at the f+f school for art and design
idea: do-it-yourself is an endeavour with a long history, with peaks in economic crises and after world wars. even in times of stability and individual fulfilment, the conceptualisation and construction of self made self-timbered furniture brings joy to its creators. brainwork, sketches, helping hands and a lot of rough wood turn into clever joints and stable structures for salon tables, writing desks and recycling stations.
billboard bench
location: zurich switzerland, 2018
context: workshop with students of the f+f school for art and design
collaboration with mirjam bürgin and offener st. jakob
idea: the workshop starts with the idea to upgrade a public space with a small intervention as imagined by the students. based on experiments and upon research on the multifaceted social conditions of the central site, discussions identified two needs: first to make a statement on the challenges and fears of the current era, and secondly, to create a place to sit and contemplate. the outcome? a portable chimera of billboard and bench.
we love wood
location: zurich switzerland, 2017
context: workshop at the f+f school for art and design
idea: students transform the terrace of the school into a vending machine city. screwdriver and miter saw turn timber into built narratives. risk a drink based on your personality or a foreign tattoo without knowing its meaning. turn the wheels of a one-armed bandit or burn calories: your reward a sweet treat. wooden experiments, three weeks only.
30 jahre sind genug [boat building workshop]
location: zurich switzerland, 2012
context: 30 jahre rote fabrik
collaboration with meier/franz and florian stirnemann
idea: the «rote fabrik», zurich's cultural centre by the lake, turns 30. in celebration, the entire building is barricaded. however, to those in the know, the building can be accessed through secret entrances and by unusual paths - for example by boat. we help potential burglars to construct a prefab vessel and sneak in by floating across the lake.
[images 1,4: gunnar meier]
copyrights: ortreport