hosted by:
Madeleine K. Wieser: designer and Assistant Professor in Product Design at Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet).
see and read more:
CURRENTS.BERLIN
where is product design headed?
Making Space Under Pressure
Where Is Product Design Education Headed? is an international talk series initiated by designer and educator Madeleine K. Wieser as part of her role as Assistant Professor in Product Design at Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet). Taking place during design weeks across Europe, each edition brings together voices from design practice, industry and academia to explore how product design education can respond to a changing profession. Each conversation is rooted in its local design context while bringing it into dialogue with international perspectives. Since its launch at Designer’s Saturday in Oslo in 2025, the series has travelled to Vienna, Barcelona, Eindhoven, Milan and Copenhagen. Now, for its seventh edition, the series arrives in Berlin as part of Currents Agenda.
Under the subtitle Making Space Under Pressure, the Berlin edition takes the form of a roundtable discussion bringing together design educators. Taking the current budget cuts and structural changes affecting German design universities as its starting point, it will bring this situation into dialogue with perspectives from other European educational contexts and ask: What happens when design programs come under increasing economic and political pressure, and how can universities sustain product design education that allows for experimentation and critical reflection while remaining closely connected to professional practice and responsive to future challenges?
Guests:
Ana Relvão – Designer and Visiting Professor at ECAL
Ineke Hans – Designer and Professor Design & Social Context and director of UdK Berlin’s Institute for Product and Process Design
Marie Radke – Designer, Artistic Associate at the Kunsthochschule Kassel and Guest Lecturer at Berlin University of the Arts (UdK)
