Basic Information

Participants：Six master’s and doctoral students in Design
Location：Würzburg, Germany
Period：Oct. 15-22, 2016

Achievements

TUA students participated in a series of workshops that was held at the University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt(FH|W-S) in the German city of Würzburg. Firstly, the participating students from both TUA and FH|W-S made presentations on their own artistic works. The students from both institutions were surprised to find that their partners had very different artistic senses. The TUA students were relatively experienced with painting, while the students of FH|W-S were good at drawing energetic illustrations. The combination of these two characteristics demonstrated during the presentations mutually inspired the participants, which allowed them to experience new artistic encounters.

Later, three groups, each of which is consisted of two TUA students and another two from FH|W-S, visited the city of Würzburg to research for co-producing works back at a FH|W-S building.

The program had initially intended to ask each group to produce a painting as its final deliverable. However, FH|W-S suggested to produce a magazine per group using a Riso printer, instead of a painting. The change brought more benefits for the students as producing a magazine required them of higher levels of theme setting and design as well as of communication. The TUA students were unfamiliar with the use of the Riso printer so they were helped by their German partners during the co-production.

【Day1】Campus tour／Student presentations／Team-making／Field research ①Visit to Würzburg Residence（all participants)
【Day2】Field research②（by group）
【Day3】Field research③（by group）／Workshop①／Discussions with faculty members
【Day4】Workshop②（Printing and binding of magazines）
【Day5】Presentations of deliverables

The program was offered in the order as above, during which TUA participants dined at the on-campus cafeteria and experienced some events, which allowed them to feel as if they were actually studying at FH|W-Sl. Although they faced language barriers to some extent, which threw them into difficult situations from time to time, they must have had a valuable experience by learning a different culture. Furthermore, every TUA participant seemed to be feeling that the program made him or her eager to study abroad while being motivated to turn eyes to the world. The participating students were attracted as fresh findings by differences in environment, system, and philosophy between TUA and FH|W-Sl, and the participating faculty members discovered many new ideas that can be used as reference, which were also the outcomes of this program.