25 March 2010 - 12:06 //

Paris Riga Design 2010

Workshop between École Boulle & Art Academy of Latvia

From March 5 to March 12, 2010, the Art Academy of Latvia hosted the first step ot the international seminar and creative exchange workshop Paris Riga Design 2010. The participants of the event are 16 students & 6 teachers form the Design Faculty Department of Environmental Art of the Art Academy of Latvia and 16 students & 4 teachers from the Spatial Design Department (DSAA Architecture intérieure) of École Boulle, famous Paris based art and design school. The second step will take place in Paris, at École Boulle, from October 11 to October 15, 2010.

People

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Project

The concept of the seminar and workshop is based on the ideas of Meeting and Hospitality, which in the global context are grounded upon such topics as Difference and Otherness, Crossbreeding and Hybridization, Identity and Singularity. During these eight days the philosophic, spatial, functional and aesthetic aspects of hospitality and hotels items will be addressed to.

The students will create hotels design concepts for the future hotels’ visitors fulfilling the main goals of retaining any kind of personal, local, national Identity within the global hotels’ network and creating free chance for travelers to enjoy the Difference of other cultures at any point of ones voyage.

The first day of the workshop, for the opening, I gave a philosophy conference on identity that you can read here :

Goals

The intended exchange of experiences and ideas between French and Latvian students and teachers will be a real practice for shaping international creative teams and for developing collaboration skills within the studies program framework. The students will work in eight mixed groups. After the creative workshop students of both schools will develop their ideas into small size projects. The work will be continued in the analogous workshop in Paris in September, 2010.

The main goal of the Project is to establish further collaboration between the École Boulle and the Art Academy of Latvia. Such creative workshops could be excellent opportunity to expand mental horizons of both sides through discovering and synthesizing novel ways of thinking and design, as well as integrating the ideas generation process within international team work.

March 2010

The first step of the workshop, in Riga, was a big success as well as an unforgettable experience. Several media went and meet us, like for example these 2 TV reports :

The first one comes from the TV channel PRO100TV.

The second one comes from the national daily newspaper Latvijas Avize.

Ambassador visitation

On Thursday March 11, we were honored to reveive the French Ambassador in Latvia, Pascal Fieschi, who visited the project of each team of students with a great interest.

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They are talking about it

The daily newspaper "5min", which is available every day for free of charge in the public transports of Riga, made its front page about us in the edition of Friday March 12. In France, also, even before our departure, the great "Beaux Arts Magazine" was announcing our workshop in Riga.

5minlvBeaux Arts Magazine

Team

French side
Stéphane Vial, philosophy applied to design teacher (coordinator of the workshop)
Magali Chaduiron, design teacher
Bruno Rosenzweig, architect, design teacher
Pierre Carré, history of arts teacher

Latvian side
Barbara Ābele, design teacher (environmental design and functional design)
Sandra Levāne, architect, design teacher (environmental design, small architecture)
Inguna Elere, graphic designer, design teacher (environmental design)
Juris Krūmiņš, design teacher (environmental design and functional design)
Henrijs Sinkevičs, architect, design teacher (environmental design)

Acknowledgements

The Project is supported in France by the Fondations Edmond & Benjamin de Rothschild and in Latvia by JSC Lido, STORA ENSO Ltd, JSC MAP Latvija, Hansas Maiznica Ltd, JSC Fazer Maiznicas, JSC Laima, COCA-COLA HBC LATVIA Ltd, Valmiermuižas alus Ltd.

I want also to say a special thank to Jānis Andris Osis, Aleksejs Naumovs, Elīna Ģibiete, Agnese Bloka, Ilze Kreituse, Holgers Elers... and all the people who are involved in this venture.

Galleries

We shared all our pictures and prepared 3 galleries of photos, available online :

They are talking about it too