Shoptalk #1: How do we know what we want?

Making fantasies come true
Date: January 11 (Thrusday) 2018, door open 19:00, talk starts 19:30
Location: KOBA, Görlitzer Strasse 72, Berlin

When we are asked to name anything you want, it is actually hard to come up with it. Yet, we are surrounded by products in which we find our desires. How do professional makers decide what they are going to make? What motivates them? What means do they have of getting their designs out into the world? Mass product designers analyze our wishes and create products that reflect them. Bespoke designers get commissioned by a single person to realize their unique desired items. Both are the process of making what we want, but in very different approach. We invite two professionals to give us their insight and audience to join in an open discussion.

Invited Speaker:
Rachel Freire (www.rachelfreire.com)
Carola Zwick (www.seven5.com)

More about the guest speaker
Rachel Freire is an artist, clothing designer and leather specialist working across multiple disciplines of fashion, film and stage. Hailing from Liverpool and based in London, she has a background in fine art and a BA Hons in Design for Performance from Central Saint Martins. She launched her conceptual fashion label on the catwalks of London Fashion Week in 2009. Her background is evidenced in narrative and sculptural collections and unique commissioned pieces evoking timelessness and craftsmanship. Militaristic and futuristic accents compliment overtly feminine elements in the meticulous construction of each garment. Her East London atelier hosts a myriad of projects and collaborations, working with highly skilled artists and technicians who can be found in the credits. She is currently fascinated with combining fabrics and circuits to create functional garments for the future and is a director and textile designer at mi.mu gloves, a gestural interface to compose and perform music with your hands. Her work is designed to tell stories, or to inspire them.

Carola Zwick holds a Diploma in Industrial Design from Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). In 1992 she cofounded Studio 7.5 in Berlin. Studio 7.5 conducts research and develops products for companies such as Rosenthal, Wilkhahn, L&C Stendal, Ford Motor Company, and Herman Miller. The studio has won several awards, including the Red Dot; Studio 7.5’s Setu line of chairs for Herman Miller received the Industrial Designers of America (IDSA) Design of the Decade Award for Best Sustainable Design Solution in 2010.
Since 2008 she has been Professor of Product Design with a focus on Interaction at the Weissensee School of Art in Berlin. There she initiated the eLAB—a transdisciplinary laboratory for the prototyping of interactions with emerging technologies.
Carola Zwick is Principal Investigator for the German Excellence Cluster called Image Knowledge Gestaltung, an interdisciplinary laboratory based at Humboldt University in Berlin in which humanities, sciences, and technology studies as well as the design disciplines aim to develop a new concept of research. This integrative scholarly platform consists of 22 disciplines from numerous university and non-university research institutions and museums. Zwick also is a member of the board of the DAAD exchange program, served as a juror for the D&AD Yellow Pencil Award for 2012, and is on the panel for the CHI 2013 Student Design Competition.