At the beginning of 2019, Studio Renate Boere was asked to organize the International Design Week of Apeejay College of Fine Arts Jalandhar and to put together a team of Dutch designers. Together with Melle Smets and Jurgen Bey, Renate Boere and Quirine Dob traveled to Northern India to give lectures and workshops for a week.

During the International Design Week, students researched new design solutions for everyday actions and objects. The focus was on innovation, sustainability, improving social conditions, and communication. Different circumstances influence the way products are designed. Cultural differences in particular play an important role in this process. What you eat, how you eat, how you wash yourself, how you clean the house or who does it, how you go to work and where you meet your friends. All of this is determined by a given cultural background in which every designer finds himself.

Under the guidance of Apeejay’s teaching team and the Dutch designers, the students learned to critically analyze their surroundings and translate this into a design idea. The International Design Week resulted in a great amount of innovative designs including a plan for community gardens, ideas to reintroduce traditional toys in 2019, and the creation of a new material from leftover flowers from surrounding temples.

International Design Week 2019 Apeejay College of Fine Arts 30/09/2019 – 06/10/2019

Renate Boere, Quirine Dob, Jurgen Bey, Melle Smets

More articles: Apeejay website report #1, Apeejay website report #2