Summer School Mentors
We are happy to introduce you the lead mentors of our summer school: Pedro Leitão, Colectivo Warehouse and Patrick Hubmann from ConstructLab. They will be responsible for the practical workshops and going to accompany the summer school for the whole period of time.
Colectivo Warehouse is an architecture and art collective that focuses their work on a participatory architectural practice with a hands-on approach, enriching the creative design and the building experience. From the city scale to urban furniture, Warehouse aims to implement participative architecture with social and cultural impact and put it in a contemporary context. Their comprehensive work ethic includes social research, design and construction, whereas the construction process is perceived as a sharing, teaching and learning moment. An important aspect of their work is the collaboration and involvement of the community as well as the preparatory research, to understand the needs and respond through a mediation process.
Warehouse is working a lot with wood, but are enthusiastic to experiment with different materials. They are used to coordinate teams, since they are conducting workshops frequently. They are most excited about the outcome and are very enthusiastic about the social context of our summer school program.
The Portuguese architect Pedro Cavaco Leitão is working and living in Porto and is part of the artistic collective Moradavaga. Throughout his academic and professional career he gained expertise in three main areas, the refurbishment of domestic and commercial interiors, furniture design, photography and graphic design. His knowledge about the local culture as well as his experiences with wood work will be a great contribution to our summer school.
Pedro is especially enthusiastic about the social aspect of the project as well as the participatory context of the summer school. He is also looking forward to the exchange of cultures, knowledge and skills between the mentors, the students and the local community.
Patrick Hubmann from ConstructLab, an Austrian designer and artisan based in Porto completes the team of the mentors. His work is all about the interaction between man-made objects, people and environment. In Patrick’s point of view, the quality of an object is defined by the quality of relations it invokes in its environment, from sketch until disposal. In his work, this is the central question he investigates and plays with. His work incorporates installations in public spaces, setting up workshops and the collaboration with local communities.
The work of the collective ConstructLab can be described as collaborative construction practice, working on both, ephemeral and permanent projects. In their projects, conception and construction are brought together, designers build and continue to design on site. Low-tech and simplicity as well as the integration of environmental awareness from conception to realisation are core aspects in their work. Their projects are realized with recycled materials, or for temporary projects designed and built with future re-use of the raw materials in mind. Throughout their projects, ConstructLab binds the creative and the practical, thinking and making and sets the project within a social, environmental and temporal context.
In addition, the theoretical mentors are: Bellastock, ReFunc, Subsolar, Kuc Miodrag, Contested Urban Waterspaces, Plataforma para a Inovação Social, Poligono and SKREI!
More about them soon!
