2017 - 2018
baywatch

Space and design strategists of the University of Art and Design Linz (Austria) researched the pores of Austrian Mountains, German cities, an African village, and a small Austrian town in an educational hiking tour: a nonlinear geographic journey to discover, to improvise, and to learn from new experiences. This is the essence of performative urbanism. Through new confrontations with reality, students subjectivize the circumstances, attach new meanings to them, and thus improvise their way through the world. This is what space and design practice is about.

The idea of pores, as developed by Walter Benjamin and picked up by Sophie Wolfrum in this research, serves as the guiding reference in the following article. The journey is described as a search for new and practical philosophies in space and design strategies. The key lies in quick changes and confrontations that focus on in situ local conditions and on responsive and improvised actions. These actions can be globally inspired, as the contrast between European and African locations shows.