HKB MA Design students visiting The Home Project studio in Lisbon. Photo HKB.
I was organizing and leading this year’s Study Trip for students of the MA Design of the University of the Arts Bern. We visited Lisbon and Porto, looking for insights on the many facets of these cities’ creative lives. Students got a glimpse of what young architects and designers are doing in the post-recession economy, and ideas about the resourcefulness and inventiveness in these contexts. The trip also allowed to tour a few museums, which are important and contribute to the shaping of the Portuguese cultural scene. Furthermore, we also were able to see two different educational contexts, in Porto and in Lisbon, and to understand the how applied design research and entrepreneurship is currently thriving in Portugal, whether through service design applied to government structures, digital design education, academic and independent research, or the making of the new Porto Design Biennale.
It was a pleasure to revisit my home country in the company of this great group of students, and to be able to visit a fantastic crop of practitioners in both Porto and Lisbon!