With its Compact Project Week, the University of Liechtenstein has attempted a productive departure from regular university life for the 10th time. At the start of the winter semester, on the theme of “Social design”, students from Architecture and Business Administration were provided with practical insights into disciplines outside their field of study and documented their results on the content management platform «Storify».
Under the guidance of visiting lecturers from Liechtenstein and abroad, some 200 students spent the period from 10 to 15 September 2012 working in 16 workshops on the university campus to look beyond the boundaries of their own field of study with a change of content, methods and lecturers – a concept that has already drawn international attention. In line with the theme of “Social design”, they committed themselves to social and/or public issues for a week. Participants of each Compact Project went looking for an institution or NGO in Liechtenstein or its surrounding region. The ideas outlined by the American sociologist Richard Sennet in his most recent book Together: The Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperatio n were put into practice in the form of projects of an interdisciplinary nature. Dr. Roman Banzer, Head of the Unit for Teaching, Learning and Applied Linguistics, and Hansjörg Quaderer (Mag. art.), lecturer at the Institute of Architecture and Planning, were in charge of planning, implementing and coordinating the projects.
200 students in 16 workshops transformed the campus in Vaduz for one week into a place of creative buzz.
16 workshops – 16 individual approaches
In addition to setting up a campus radio station, garage bands and creating print messages, workshops focusing on dance, poetry slam, printing for the blind and shadow-theatre were organized. Games were also designed, broken items were repaired or recycled, sign language was learnt, and lyrical manifestations and sound installations were featured. In the scope of the Compact Project Week, the first Summer Academy of the renowned Architectural Association School of Architecture in London was held. The results of the projects were presented to the public in the form of exhibitions and installations as well as concerts and performances during a closing event on the university campus on Saturday, 15 September.
All 16 workshops of the compact project week 2012 documented their work and results in public on the content curation platform «Storify».
Exchange of ideas and common spirit
This year’s Compact Project Week was characterized by a surprising exchange of ideas between the different workshops. “A common spirit evolved, which is something that you cannot plan but is created when motivation, commitment and curiosity are combined in an ideal way,” summarized Hansjörg Quaderer regarding the special atmosphere on the campus. There is no lack of inspiration and ideas for the 2013 Compact Project Week, and the 2012 Compact Project Week has certainly encouraged the development of this experimental composition. However, this year’s experiences will first be evaluated after some time has passed to put everything into perspective, and the results will then be published.
With the unusual project «Storify your compact project» the University of Liechtenstein even made it to the frontpage of SwissEdSocial Daily.
Compact projects 2012 in the internet
During the Compact Project Week, progress reports from all the workshops were published online.
• Storifyhttp://storify.com/unili_CP
Results including photos, videos, comments and the best extracts of all the contributions
• Storifybei SwissEdSocial Daily http://bit.ly/RE8NGb
• Facebook photos https://www.facebook.com/uni.li/photos
• Youtube videohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P26jOPOUesE
• Facebook groups of single workshops
Sign language https://www.facebook.com/pages/08-Nonverbale-Kommunikation-Geb%C3%A4rdensprache/524571940892709
Upcycling https://www.facebook.com/03Upcycling
Book & Social Design https://www.facebook.com/Kompaktprojekt12
Radio «Störsender» https://www.facebook.com/07StorsenderUniRadio?ref=pb
• Media releases 201209_Medienspiegel_Kompaktprojekte2012.pdf