Interaction Design

Plan B

Prototype Exhibition — MA Interaction Design
Course Ecological Interactions / Biodesign Challenge
Aktionsraum 5.K06

Tuesday, 29 April 2025
16.00 – 20.00 with snacks and drinks

Wednesday, 30 April 2025
10.00 – 15.00

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"Plan B" engages with watery, terrestrial and urban environments as sites of profound contemporary crisis, seeking to formulate and put into practice new understandings of interactions for challenges that are so close to life.

Showcasing works of our students from the second semester MA Interaction Design as part of the course Ecological Interactions and the Biodesign Challenge in New York, it probes novel approaches to complex systemic and ecological issues, aiming to establish new perspectives on multispecies coexistence. In these times of uncertainty and ecological calamity, how might we begin to be-with, attune and respond to these challenges – not with panic – but with empathy and care?

“Proto-Lichen" proposes lichen as collaborators for future cities, bringing species and architecture together. “RIVER-SCAPES" investigates hydro-logics of the river Töss, probing water in absence and excess and formulating design responses for a river in face of disruptive geoengineering and climate change. "CHORNOZEM" confronts us with the contamination of Ukrainian soil as tactic of war, making soil's trauma visible and demanding socio-planetary caretaking.

Revealing how rivers, soils and lichen subvert boundaries, these works dismantle disciplinary, political, and individual borders, pointing towards collective dependence and responsibility. They are insurrectionary proposals that form a response to the cultural paralysis in the face of planetary crisis – and are an offer to re-enchant a world in transition.