Starting from the ancestral art of ceramics, Ruedi Baur invites us to work on the notions of information space by raising awareness of the relationship between graphic expression and spatial perception in architecture as in public space. It will be based on international case studies.
At the end of the training, the trainee will have assimilated:
We will start from different historical and contemporary examples of the use of terracotta in public spaces. Starting from ecological, social, participatory and cultural considerations, we must rethink our living together in urban space. We will take ancestral materials and techniques from world cultures as a conceptual tool to think about our common future. We will reconsider habits to confront real needs. We will draw, we will project, we will question, we will prototype for another world, we will go from detail to utopia, from the porcelain spoon to the earth city... Several case studies in various cities around the world will help us to pose the fair questions like to each develop a project that makes sense in a place chosen by each participant. Each participant must bring a laptop to develop an individual and collective project.
Designer, teacher, researcher, citizen of a “World to change”.
Since the 1980s, Ruedi Baur has considered his activity as a designer in the context of a civic space to be transformed. Initially working as a graphic designer for numerous cultural institutions, since the 1990s he has organized transdisciplinary teaching based on critical research into design culture nourished by the practical experiences developed in his workshops.
Claiming interdisciplinary design very early on, he created the Intégral network in 1989 and directed the workshops until 2023: Intégral Ruedi Baur, Paris, Zurich and Berlin, then Intégral designers. In 2004 he created and directed the Design2context institute with sociologist Vera Baur at the ZHdK in Zurich, then in 2011 the Institute for Critical Design Research Civic-City; in 2018, the young 10-billion-human university company.
His Bibliography allows you to follow his career, notably with books such as “Architecture-graphisme” (1998), “Des-Orientation1 et 2” (2008-09) “Signs for Peace, an impossible visual Encyclopedia” (2012), “Facing the territorial brand” (2013), “A World to change” (2017) “And suddenly the world was immobilized” (2020) …
Sociologist and Anthropologist, President of Civic City
Ceramic craftsman
Specialist in Moroccan ceramics
Passionate about Moroccan craftsmanship since an early age, Youssef AIT BRAHIM, a 45-year-old Franco-Moroccan, graduated with a DESS in International Project Management from Paris XII University.
He started his professional career as an export development consultant for around fifteen years before moving into the construction industry where he worked for 10 years as a site manager and business manager for two SMEs. interior renovation and structural masonry work.
In 2017, he co-founded the company Maison Zellige with the aim of importing and distributing zelliges, Moroccan artisanal ceramics (business which he sold in 2022).
Today and since 2019 he has managed an interior renovation and decoration company, Pigment Naturel Decoration, specializing in the application of Moroccan craftsmanship.
This workshop will take the approach of the School of Non-knowledge (see civic-city.org) consisting of placing what we do not know, rather than our certainties, at the center of our reflections and our projects. We will therefore have to agree to unlearn in order to better address the question of the presence of terracotta in the city of tomorrow. We will have to start from scratch and reconsider the possibilities of this material, analyze the new possibilities, the new needs, the priorities for our well-being together.