VERTICAL WORKSHOP (CCM-CEM)

BY SIMÓN BALLEN

THE MATERIAL HISTORY OF WATER

The vertical workshop "THE MATERIAL HISTORY OF WATER" explores the past, present and future of water in a Mexican context. Participants began by researching various historical objects, vernaculars, and pre-industrial solutions around the theme of water and will conceptualize around it.

Based on the findings and through hands-on experiments, students spent three days designing and exploring water containers and water solutions in an alternate reality, starting from a speculative pre-industrial or post-industrial setting.

BACK

Simón Ballen is a Colombian product designer currently based between Amsterdam and Medellín. He graduated from the Man and Wellbeing department at the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2018.

Through his work, he researches the intangible relations between objects, people, and local traditions using design as a tool for critical discourse on the use of materials in order to create sustainable solutions.

His practice is built in close relation to the fields of anthropology and material culture, through which he explores issues related to ecology, identity, heritage and colonialism.

DAY 1: CONCEPT

The design students meet Simón Ballen and he exposes the problem and the brief.

DAY 2: EXPLORATION

The designer's research on water, the nowadays problems, and its relationship with human culture through time.

DAY 3: PROTOTYPE

Once the brief is understood and the approach from which they wish to address the situation is defined, the manufacturing of a prototype begins.

DAY 4: RESULTS

Proposals addresed some of the water challenges of the local Mexican context (purity, filtration, containment, storage or transport of water) in a functional, poetic, conceptual, critical, speculative, or narrative way. Objects and proposals were manufactured with natural materials.