Jonge stad

Lecture and workshop as part of The Young City — a study day by and for young people organised by archipel
In collaboration with Maxime Prananto.

Archipel brought together several youth organisations and three design practices to explore key questions: How can young people shape the future of Ghent? How can they actively develop interventions in and for the city?

For the workshop Overtreffende Trap (Comparative Superlative), an unconventional form of imagination was explored. Participants were asked to forget that they are designers — even that they are human — and to leave behind judgments and preconceived future visions. Entering the sealed interior of Shopping Zuid in Ghent without conceptual baggage, they adopted a non-human perspective: that of an escalator, a surveillance camera, a depicted animal species, or a plastic palm tree. These perspectives entered into dialogue with each other and with a reporter.

The workshop became an exercise in letting go of instinctive designer reflexes, deliberately disorienting oneself within a familiar environment, accepting an arbitrarily assigned perspective, and suspending both misplaced optimism and assumed judgment.