THE UNCONDITIONAL UNIVERSITY

The unconditional university is not necessarily nor exclusively situated within the walls of what we nowadays call a university. It is not necessarily, not exclusively, not exemplarily represented by the figure of the professor. It occurs, it seeks its site, wherever this unconditionality announces itself.” – Jacques Derrida, The Unconditional University

Anja Vormann and students of the design faculty at the Hochschule Düsseldorf experiment with the foundations of their own discipline, between the FFT and urban space. In the context of the demand for a “right to the city” (Henri Lefebvre,) in which the urban society should act as the motor for transformation within urban life, the role of design will be scrutinised and examined. How can designers, employing the artistic means at their disposal, their knowledge and their experience, do things that eschew following the (subconscious) logic of optimisation and consumerism?

It is with this question in mind that we head out: We conduct field research under the open sky, analysing the urban environment we come upon, in the production of which we are involved. The so-called Ingenhoven-Tal valley and the redesigned Gustaf-Gründgens-Platz square will become fields of experimentation for playful formats that are both work as well as teachings. Visitors are encouraged to participate in our courses and to experience the rhetoric power of design in text, imagery, and space in relation to the urbanscapes.

We’ll start every day at 11am with a one hour workshop at the FFT. After a break we will try out the learned techniques from 2pm to 4pm at the Ingenhoven-Tal. The results from these efforts will be transferred into an exhibition that is open at the FFT in the time from June 2nd to June 4th.