Cities are our natural world, created by us and yet, in their constantly shifting complexity, almost beyond our grasp. Urbanization processes do not end at the city boundaries. Almost infinite networks, alienated communication, hasty consumption and conflicts of social marginalization or economic injustice determine our urban survival. Cities form contested spaces, whose present refers back to the past, whose power structures can be identified and also changed. It is important to predict the need for change well in advance but also to be able to react to acute crises great and small with fresh solutions.
Innovations are driven on a bottom-up basis. Not infrequently they arise at the margins of society, where established structures encounter influences from without, traditional responses no longer work, or safeguards apply to some but not to others.
The projects developed in the studio situation of our Social Design program show that societal innovation–meaning extraordinary results and unexpected approaches–becomes possible where different forms of knowledge and methods interact, where artistic acumen combines with creativity from the so-called hard sciences, where design, theory, architecture and the fine arts not only pool their strategies but also enter into confrontations and alliances that can be both risky and productive.
Innovative methods construct new meanings, strengthen responsibility and thus create the preconditions for identification with one’s own actions. Students who choose the Master’s in Social Design – Arts as Urban Innovation signal their determination to play a critical and active part in influencing society and a refusal to discount the future!
Curriculum
The master programme Social Design Arts as Urban Innovation at the University of Applied Arts Vienna is oriented towards graduates from diverse fields of study, thereby stipulating work in transdisciplinary teams as the central teaching and learning approach in the programme. On the basis of professional competences acquired in their respective previous studies, students become acquainted with transcending disciplinary codes and thinking and working in greater interrelationships. Art in synergy with project-related scientific methods and knowledge is seen as a tool for urban innovation.
Duration and Scope:
4 semesters / 120 ECTS
Graduation: "Master of Arts" (MA)
People
Florian Burger
Political adviser, Vienna
Social cohesion in societies and democracy itself depend on a certain level of (social) security. To shape and design those elemental backup systems is what pushes Florian. Process design is a daily applied technique, supported by visualization. Florian studied jurisprudence at the Paris Lodron University and Social Design at the University of Applied Arts.
- Title / Function
- Alumni
- Field of Expertise
- Politics
- florian.burger@gmail.com
Project
Coronity Radio
Project
Vienna Dream
Project
Unlearning City Behaviour
Project
ur9banize! Festival 2018
Eliza Chojnacka
Designer, Vienna/Warsaw
Eliza is graduate of Product Design at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. She studied at the Design Department of the University of Economics in Izmir and at the Department of Urban Sciences at the University of Warsaw. Interested mainly in the meaning of common space and particularly passionate about working with local communities. She uses mapping as a tool to explore urban space and to visualize the sensual experience of our surroundings.
- eliza.chojn@gmail.com
İlkin Beste Çırak
City and Regional Planner, Art and Design, İzmir, Turkey
Beste is a city planner and art designer, who produces her art based workings and public games in the realm of relational aesthetics in an open call for participation to create bases for nonviolent social change. Predominantly, taking public spaces as the core of co-exisence she discusses scales of localities, identity and culture production with synthesizing various mediums, disciplines and communities to courage fertile dialogues.
- ilkinbestecirak@gmail.com
- Links
- https://www.kapilar.org
La Schandrè Coetzee
Social Designer, Vienna
Through her work in numerous community development projects in South Africa and Namibia she learned that in order for real change to foster, social development and initiatives need to be incorporated in to all facets of human life. From her perspective, Social Design is an artistic process through which one can gain deeper insight into social urban issues and through relationships with local communities, innovative and lasting impact can be born.
- Title / Function
- Student
- Field of Expertise
- Communication/ Philosophy
- coetzee.lg@gmail.com
Frank Daubenfeld
Artist, Vienna / Luxembourg
Frank studied Fine Arts at Kunsthochschule Mainz and at University of Strasbourg. He works primarily in the field of painting and installation. His works revolve around movement, symbols, as well as the connections and dialogues between image carriers. He is interested in how artistic practices can make use of different mediums to create a dialogue about social matters. Social themes addressed through an artistic approach can change the perspective and challenge collective belief systems.
- Field of Expertise
- Fine Arts
- daubenfeldfrank@gmail.com
- Links
- www.frankdaubenfeld.eu
Project
„Wo ist das Kind?“
Project
At Home in a Liminal World
Project
Right to the city
Project
questionism
Eylem Ertürk
Arts Manager, İstanbul / Vienna
Having background in management and fine arts photography, Eylem has been working as an arts manager focusing on local cultural policies and socially engaged artistic practices. She is interested in research and production in visual arts to bolster cultural diversity and broaden cultural rights, participation and dialogue.
- eylemde@yahoo.com