IDW 2023

7 6 1 2 1 2 3 # 0 2 In 1988, 35 years ago, Martin Margiela founded his fashion label after graduating from the Royal Academy of fine arts in Antwerp. Already the first show of the house was set to trigger a paradigmshift in the fashion world and until his exit from the label in 2008 Margiela remained one of the most important and influential figures not only in the creative industry while famously completely avoiding any public appearance. Much reflection and theoretical processing has been done on Margiela’s design methods. So far, however, there have been few attempts to transfer them to other creative fields. The one-week workshop with a group of interdisciplinary students from Margiela’s place of origin, Antwerp will attempt to do so. Using 5 design methods derived from different collections by Margiela, students engage in a transformational performance on their own disciplines. Divided into groups, the students will use small design task to find out how their assigned method can be applied and transferred to another discipline. As an example: Margiela has bought old furniture and painted it white or covered it with cloth. The form or expression has remained the same, but the new uniformity has created a context to other furniture from other eras. The labour that went into the custom-made covers revaluates the formerly discarded object, challenging conventional notions of luxury. Thus, as a first approach to Margiela’s work, students could do interventions on existing furniture in their studio in the style of the 5 methods mentioned above. As the week progresses, the assignments could shift to an urban scale and incorporate more complex social and environmental issues into the work. The final products of the workshop week will consist of small assignments. Theworkswill not contain finished designs, but sequences from the different disciplines - which together represent the interpretation of Margiela’s design method. A red thread, so to speak, based on the method, through fragments in several scales. What we can learn from MaisonMartinMargiela ​By Julian Brües & Wassily Walter # 0 3 When food storms the squares By Eulàlia Gomez-Escoda & Emma O’Connell Food constitutes approximately 15% of the household budget in most European countries, only behind housing and transport costs. Butwhile urban planning and architecturedeal with questions related to howwe live or howwemove, the question of howweeat isnot usually included in theconcernsof theprojects that architectsdevelop in themetropolis. The way we supply ourselves with groceries — the distances we travel, themeans of transport we use, the type of foodwe buy and the places where we do it — directly impacts in the shape of the city and is different for each type of urban form. In this sense, we can say that the way in which a city feeds its citizens constitutes a unique ‘foodprint’. Food has been central to urban life and to urban social practices over time. At the beginning of the 19th century, market halls werebuilt inmanyEuropeancitiesaspreciseumbrellas that filtered the light intoan interiorof majesticdimensions that sheltered the ephemeral goods sold inside. Markets represented the perfect synthesis between rural and urban world: farmers who sold their crops inside personalized the presence of productive landscapes in the very heart of thecity. In the second half of the 20th century most of these structureswent out of fashion inmanymetropolises, not because they were no longer functional but because they did not fit into the nature of public space and economic activity that planners, architects and politicians had in mind to shape modern city centers. Food supply sites ceased to be the meeting point between producers and consumers and, consequently, the link between what we eat and the territory that feeds us was weakened. In the 21st century, food has once again taken over the squares and farmers’ markets, gastronomic festivals, and bar and restaurant terraces fill public space with smells and flavours. The workshop aims to approach ways of mapping food procurement in Antwerpen — precisely and sensorially — to quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate access to food in the city, analysing the impact on such a daily activity of global issues such as distribution inequalities, cultural sovereignty or the climate crisis.

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