Local Cultures – Global Spaces
Abstract
In a world where global dynamics persistently reshape our spatial and human interconnections, we brought design students into work-integrated learning at the rural Farm Studio to reimagine design education. The yearlong Farm Studio in Hong Kong’s countryside rooted students deeply in the essence of a concretized, enacted place, what Manzini calls the “hyper-local”. Different from conventional design settings, the Farm Studio, enriched through engaging communities from culturally diverse backgrounds, afforded in design students a provocative life-wide immersion in the exploration of local farming intricacies, cultural specifities, and socio-economic imaginaries. It prompted in students the redefinition of spatial, temporal, and multi-complex relationships to their surroundings. Drawing on in-depth interviews with students and participant observation, our paper examines the transformative learning outcomes by discerning six vectors for locally resituating design education: Experiential demands, multisensory learning, cooperative creativity, nuanced understanding, societal transformations, and imaginary attunement. Engagement in local farming practices sparked in students critical reflections on global consumerism, moving from passive acceptance to actively questioning the prevailing narrative. The Farm Studio also reoriented students’ design-specific perspectives: transitioning from mere computer-aided conceptualisation to tangible prototyping, emphasizing the importance of physical immediacy to local and illuminating the durable impacts in every design decision taken. Though highlighting how students navigated the multidimensional lessons at the Farm Studio, this study highlights the catalytic role of the local agricultural setting for nurturing life-wide environmental learning, emphasizing the criticality of place-based pedagogies in redefining social timespace dynamics and shaping holistic education amidst global and climatic shifts.
Markus Wernli is a bioregional designer, community strategist and scholar. He holds a Master of New Media Arts from Danube University and a PhD in Social Design from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University where he currently is a Research Assistant Professor with the School of Design. Markus does research on food-enabling urbanism and community-directed resource care on the intersection of society, space and household. He works toward an environmentally subordinated, culturally reflexive and equitable society.
Izzy Yi JIAN is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Happy Ageing Lab, School of Architecture, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. After getting her PhD degree from the Department of Building and Real Estate, HK PolyU in 2021, she worked as an Ernst Mach Research Fellow at the Department of Geography and Regional Research, the University of Vienna. Then she joint Public Design Lab, School of Design, HK PolyU as a Postdoctoral Fellow until the fall of 2023. Her research and teaching interests include spatial justice, privatisation/ liminality of public space, inclusive design and Geomedia.
Kam-Fai CHAN is a Teaching Fellow in Social Design at the School of Design, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He is interested in transdisciplinary design research, community-driven design strategy, and contemporary discourses of media, art, and sociotechnical change.