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IT
Andrea Branzi (*1938, Florence) is an architect and designer based in Milan. From 1964 to 1974 he was part of the first Italian internationally known avant-garde group Archizoom Associati, whose projects are kept in the Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione in Parma and the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris. Since 1967 he has been working in the fields of industrial design, design research, architecture, urban planning, education and cultural promotion. He is professor of architecture and industrial design at the Politecnico di Milano.
In 1987, Andrea Branzi was awarded the Compasso d’Oro Speciale for his life achievement as a designer and theoretician. In 2008 he was appointed Honorary Royal Designer of the United Kingdom.
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DE
Photo: Edith Stenhuys
Prof. Dr. Michael Braungart is the founder of EPEA International Environmental Research GmbH in Hamburg, co-founder of McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC) in Charlottesville (USA), and founder of the Hamburger Umweltinstitut e.V. (HUI). These institutes share a common set of values that encompasses intelligent, aesthetic and eco-effective design for products and production processes that are conceived in a closed circuit and are both, not harmful to humans and nature and useful. He currently holds four professorships: the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Twente University in Enschede and TU Delft.
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Photo: Robert Fischer
After completing a goldsmith’s apprenticeship, Saskia Diez decided to study industrial design. Rather by accident, her career path brought her back to jewellery design. Her formally reduced works clearly reveal the perspective of the design. They impress with clarity and smart simplicity, play with tradition and modernity, and refer to the zeitgeist without being fashionable. They deliberately question the principles behind which traditional jewellery is made. Despite Diez’ reflective way of working her designs never lack poetry.
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AU
Photo: Mark Mahaney
Natalie Jeremijenko is an artist and engineer. She has studied biochemistry, physics, neuroscience and precision mechanics and primarily investigates the interface between society, environment and technology. Her work has been shown at the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt am Main; the LUX Gallery, London; the Rotterdam Film Festival; the Whitney Biennale, New York; Documenta, Kassel and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She is Director of the Engineering Design Studio at Yale University and Associate Professor of Computer Science and Environmental Sciences at the Visual Art Department of New York University. Jeremijenko describes her work alternatively as “X Design” (short for experimental design) and sees herself as “thingker”.
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Bertram Kober studied photography at the Kunsthochschule Leipzig. He is a founding member of the photographer agency Punctum. His works are exhibited in Germany and abroad. He is represented in important museums and collections. In 2003, he was appointed to the German Photographic Academy. Since 2005 he has been lecturing at the fas Berlin, from 2007 at the New School for Photography. In 2011, he was awarded the “Best Photographer of the 54th International Art Exhibition” at the Venice Biennale. Important projects are, among others, Sacri Monti and Carrara, with whom Bertram Kober looks critically at human actions and their consequences.