EMMA – Creative Center is searching for the next three designers to come to Pforzheim and share with the local community their thoughts and projects. The application period is now running until Friday, November 22nd 2019.
As a recently graduated young designer, what does one do? How does one get inspiration, test ideas, get room for trial and error? Very often designers must set aside their own personal projects to work in an agency or studio in order to provide for themselves. However, a creative mind is never at ease, and while answering to the needs of a company and doing assigned tasks, ideas for potential independent projects keep coming on a constant rhythm. So where does one find the time and space to develop a project of personal interest? During the last years EMMA – Creative Center in Pforzheim recognized how important it is to give young designers the time and calmness to really focus on their work and to experiment with new materials and techniques, leaving behind any kind of professional and financial preoccupations.
Final exhibition_Photo by Winfried Reinhardt
It’s a rare opportunity to question yourself, and try to find your own answers. What does design mean to you? What topics make your mind go around and around? How can you, as a creative and educated individual, can contribute to all these unsettling questions that surrounds us on a daily basis? “Designers in Residence” is more than the chance to fuel, fund and hub your own project for three months, it became throughout the years a platform to show the public which topics currently concern international young designers the most.
Every year for “Designers in Residence”, three international designers, coming from the fields of fashion, jewelry and industrial design lived and worked in Pforzheim for the time between April and June. In 2019’s edition, an oversized brooch with a political message, 3D-printed clothing and shoes, an inspiration diary/book and objects that materialized thoughtful observations of our surroundings were the results of an intense but prolific experience.
Sheng-Hung Lee_Photo by Winfried Reinhardt
The chosen scholarship holders, Ganit Goldstein (fashion designer from Israel), Dabin Lee (South Korean jewelry designer based in Antwerp, Belgium) and Sheng-Hung Lee (industrial and product experience designer from Taiwan) each worked on a topic that to them seemed central and impossible to ignore. Diverse themes such as the environmental crisis that floods news broadcast every day, the delicate relationship between tradition and technology in the era of digital innovation, or even just the simple question “how much of our actions are thoughtless acts?” all came together to inhabit EMMA – Creative Center and grow into objects that stand on the verge of something else than design.
Final Exhibition_ Photo by Winfried Reinhardt
For “Designers in Residence” 2020, EMMA – Creative Center is searching for the next three designers to come to Pforzheim and share with the local community their thoughts and project. EMMA – Creative Center Pforzheim is the central platform for the Creative Industries in Pforzheim. The creative center is housed on the premises of a former swimming pool designed in the art nouveau style next to the river Enz in Pforzheim. It has an area of 3000m² and offers workshops and co-working workplaces, ateliers, offices and exhibition spaces.
Applications
The application period is now running until Thursday, November 22nd 2019. Application can only be made online here.
The decision will be announced mid December 2019.
