What do IED students talk about in their thesis? This year the European Institute of Design has decided a single theme for all discussions: 'RESPECT! People. Future. Places.'
IED Italia (Istituto Europeo di Design), the international school of Design, Fashion, Visual Arts and Communication, has just concluded the 2019/2020 academic year. It was a particular year, halfway through, interrupted by the health emergency and reinvented by online teaching, in full respect of social distancing. But as per tradition, for all students at the end of their course, the end of the lessons coincides with the beginning of the graduation session. This year's graduates, like everyone else, had to deal with the lockdown, which coincided with the months of the most intense work to finalize their projects. But as many students also told nss magazine on the pages of COVID-19 Next Creative Voices, from a dramatic situation new hints arose both for the contents and the work processes.
This year, as the last act of a year that made "change" its guide-line, IED has a unique theme for all three-year theses: RESPECT! PEOPLE. Future. Places. Students were asked to reinterpret their projects according to a single, great message of respect: respect understood in its many facets, which includes raising awareness of the environmental emergency, eliminating inequalities and building the community more and more solid and supportive.
Milan is also the protagonist of many projects. Fucina 360, for example, aims to create a network and a co-working space, sale and presentation of the creations of young emerging designers to sediment a new artistic-cultural reference point in the city, unprecedented at the university level. Communication Design students took over the redevelopment project of the Santa Giulia construction site (a residential district in the south-east of the city), started in 2004 and discontinued in 2009, to make it a sharing district and not just a residential one.
