Design Studio II
Faculty : Guillem Campradon, Laura Benitez, Saul Baeza, Roger Guilemany, Jana Tothill
Last updated
Faculty : Guillem Campradon, Laura Benitez, Saul Baeza, Roger Guilemany, Jana Tothill
Last updated
As we move forward in Design Studio II, my journey shifts from broad systemic concerns to a more situated, embodied exploration. This phase invites us to ground our interventions within lived experience, using design as a tool for personal reflection and collective transformation.
At this stage, ethnocognition becomes central, the way knowledge, culture, and identity are shaped through making and shared through social interactions. By understanding how our own practices, histories, and skills intersect with collective narratives, we can design interventions that redefine participation, knowledge exchange, and social integration.
This term is not just about designing for change, but designing from within it, shaping intentional, context-aware, and socially engaged interventions.
The spaces we inhabit, both physical and digital, shape how we learn, adapt, and integrate. In makerspaces, ethnocognition manifests as a living, evolving network of skills and cultural knowledge, where traditional craft meets digital fabrication. Just as internet algorithms invisibly influence the information we consume, the design of learning environments and access to fabrication tools impacts how knowledge is preserved, transformed, and shared.
For marginalized communities, access to makerspaces is often limited, creating barriers to participation and slowing cultural and economic integration. Much like digital filter bubbles, exclusion from material and technological resources can reinforce social and economic precarity. Recognizing these barriers is key to reclaiming agency in the knowledge we produce and the spaces we inhabit.
What if, marginalized communities could actively shape their own knowledge networks? Instead of adapting to systems designed without them in mind? By fostering inclusive, community-led makerspaces, individuals can break out of extractive learning models, moving from passive users of technology to active creators of knowledge, craft, and culture. Rather than being confined to isolated or restrictive structures, makerspaces can serve as alternative platforms for integration, where people build economic independence, preserve heritage, and experiment with new hybrid identities. This alternative present is one where technology doesn’t replace tradition, but extends it, enabling new modes of collaboration, self-determination, and shared agency.
Shifting to co-creators of our environments, we counter restrictive biases and redefine what it means to belong, participate, and shape the future through making.
