Formafantasma

PA What is GEO-Design?

SF Joseph Grima, the director of Design Academy Eindhoven, introduced the concept of GEO-Design first as an exhibition curated by Martina Muzi, where alumni of Design Academy have a chance to explore the concept on a thematic basis. The 2018 ‘GEO-Design: Alibaba’ exhibition was the first, and last year Martina curated ‘GEO-Design: Junk’. Now it is also a department, and Joseph asked us to be the heads. We have a similar perspective on what needs to be done in design education. In the future, maybe GEO-Design will also become a publication, and more. There are different ways of interpreting the term. We feel that design has been focusing on the needs of users for a long time, and sometimes there is a disregard for the infrastructure upon which design operates. Whenever we produce an object or a service, inevitably we support an economy, a way of sourcing materials or transforming, distributing them. We believe that if as designers we investigate this way of producing things, we can become more knowledgeable and develop a holistic perspective that can allow us to become much more