Lisa Baumgarten & Teresa Palmieri

Drawing on our experience in design education, we propose refocusing on something essential: connection. In times of polarisation, we need to build networks of solidarity — with fellow practitioners and surrounding communities alike. Yet institutionalised design education’s neoliberal-capitalist framework doesn’t always make this easy.

Connecting requires openness, curiosity, and welcoming pluriversal ways of life. Like a muscle, it needs continuous training. When did you last have a real conversation with a stranger? One thing is certain: we need everyone on board for transformation toward more eco-social and just futures.

In this performative workshop, we explore dimensions of connection — interpersonal, physical, intellectual, collective, and transcendent. Inspired by the Social Muscle Club, BFAMFAPhD, and Paul Steinmann, we share and reinvent exercises drawn from educators, students, and artists — holding space to train your social muscles, with all that entails: joy, awkwardness, laughter, and generosity.

About

Lisa Baumgarten is a critical design mediator working in design, as researcher, and as teacher/learner. She has a background in design and cultural history & theory. She is the co-creator of the participatory research platform Teaching Design which focuses on design education from intersectional feminist perspectives. Baumgarten has been teaching design theory and practice as professor or adjunct lecturer at international design universities since 2017. Her current research focuses on design mediation as critical practice. www.lisabaumgarten.de / www.teaching-design.net

Teresa Palmieri (PhD in Architecture) is design researcher and lecturer at the Master in Eco-social Design at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. Her research focuses on Participatory Design with a particular interest in developing design methodologies (e.g. participatory prototyping, collaborative mapping, design patterns) that foster collaboration between multiple actors in co-design projects aimed at eco-social transformation in villages and cities. As an educator, she is interested in exploring and developing relational design pedagogies.