BA Interior and Spatial Design students collaborate with IED Kunsthal University, Bilbao
- Written byGeorgina Lampen
- Published date 01 September 2022
Last year, BA Interior and Spatial Design began a new collaboration with IED Kunsthal, a design university located in Bilbao, Spain. Students from this year's graduating cohort had the exciting opportunity to visit Bilbao and take part in a show at the university, as well as deliver presentations and workshops as part of the DRS2022.
For year 3 students, the final 2 units of the course focused on the regeneration of Zorrotzaurre, a post-industrial area of Bilbao built on an artificial island. The project's aim was to design proposals for a former biscuit factory site, which required remote online working with students at IED Kunsthal as they researched and explored the area together. Each student created a map of the urban landscape through a variety of media including textiles, projection and interaction.
In June 2022, 5 student representatives were selected to take part in a visit to Bilbao, where they exhibited their urban fabric mappings of the current condition of Zorrotzaurre and design proposals for the future of the island.
Maya Hammond, Xu Zhang and Lesley Zhang were 3 of the selected representatives. They told us more about how they found the experience.
Tell us about the exhibition you held at IED Kunsthal, Bilbao?
Maya: Our final academic year was focused on gaining an understanding of a regeneration project of Zorrotzaurre in Bilbao. This project aimed to transform an industrial area into a creative island. In response to the site, we each created a textile map of the urban landscape based on our explorations of the island. We were fortunate enough to have the help of IED Kunsthal students and staff who were supporting us with research and key findings on the ground. They joined us for discussions and reviews remotely throughout the year.
Xu: We displayed the map works we developed during our Urban Fabric unit. We also exhibited pictures, images and catalogues of our final year projects.
Maya: We also had the opportunity to collaborate with the students in Bilbao to create a large-scale textile map of the urban landscape. This combined all our different explorations of the island of Zorrotzaurre. It became a key moment in understanding how a project moves from its initial research stage into contributing to real projects across borders.
Tell us about the presentations you delivered as part of the DRS2022?
Lesley: We hosted a series of events focusing on the graduate showcase exhibition. During the presentations, each student representative introduced their own work to the audience, and we also presented and discussed our experience in terms of the remote teaching method in the post-pandemic era. Alongside this, we held an Urban Fabrics mapping workshop with the teachers and students at IED Kunsthal. It will forever be an unforgettable experience for me to research and create the fabric map together with them.
Maya: Each BA Interior and Spatial Design student had the chance to present their maps to an audience whereby we broke down our points of interest of our individual maps of Zorrotzaurre. In my own map, I explored the relationship between people and place, focusing on nodes and local meeting points that became magnets for gathering local neighbourhoods and tourists into a shared space.
https://youtu.be/ApzTZ8Oh32E
How did you find the overall experience?
Xu: Our schedule was tight, but it was full of new discoveries. We not only set up an exhibition at IED Kunsthal, but also held workshops with IED students and local stakeholders. We visited many local landmarks and exhibitions together. These experiences are rare to have, and I have benefited a lot from them and will treasure them.
Our local classmates recommended to us their favourite restaurants, and a dozen of our new friends sat down for lunch. We were even lucky enough to catch up with the IED Kunsthal graduation party, and we sang and danced to deepen our friendship.
This experience taught me that the power of cultural and regional differences is very powerful. We exchanged knowledge with the people of Bilbao, and this led me to a lot of new ideas for the graduation project that related to this city. I hope the students and teachers in Bilbao can also benefit from it.
Lesley: Tapas in Bilbao is really good! The people there made my whole experience in Bilbao lovely. Students at IED Kunsthal warmly introduced the best local dishes and places to us. Local Basque people invited us to join their festival and gave us the festival Basque scarf – which coincidentally is what my project focuses on! The key takeaway from this experience for me is that every culture has its own beautiful yet rich traditions and history that you can get lost in. You become immersed in another world.
Maya: I had the pleasure of working with like-minded individuals who showed us the importance of exchanging ideas and communicating with the local people. It offered us new insights into how we should live and design. Having thoroughly researched the site from London, it was an exciting opportunity to be able to explore and translate our findings into a collective map, to fully understand the site we were working on.
I particularly enjoyed working with the IED Kunsthal students because we worked well as a team and established a great connection together. They strengthened our understanding of Zorrotzaurre’s history, and gave us insight into the local opinion on how the regeneration project should be approached for the future of the island.
This trip has become a great story of discovering a space we had worked so closely with, and I am very thankful to have experienced this with an amazing team. It has strengthened my passion and curiosity for the built environment and I’m excited to use this experience in my future projects.
BA Interior and Spatial Design 2022. Exhibition set up IED Kunsthal Bilbao, Spain