Play the System
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is a platform for parametric design in graphic design. It documents the work of students and teachers at the Department of Design at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW), who are investigating the significance of the system as a conceptual model and design method under the title “Parametric Design in Graphic Design.”

Design is less about intuitive, even ingenious “strokes of genius” and more about a holistic and rule-based (systemic and systematic) process of gaining knowledge and shaping form. It is becoming increasingly important to be able to design dynamic systems that both guide and inspire the design process.

Parametric design refers to this design in and of systems—with rules, their modes of operation, and systematic manipulability. The research project, led by Prof. Heike Grebin, is an integral part of teaching and aims to raise awareness of design as a performative process.

Play the System brings together selected study projects in which the system plays an important role as a design method – whether analog or digital. The works are created in a fruitful symbiosis of theory, design, and technology. Socially relevant issues and positions from philosophy, art, and avant-garde design from around 1900 to the present day are repeatedly discussed.

Play the System is an invitation to become aware of the systemic competence of graphic design and to gain the maturity to use the tools of digital design critically.

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Play the System Projects /

p53 Berlin. A Contradictory Present

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The city that Janna Thaden knows best, Berlin, which has long been her home, seems to have been changing rapidly in terms of urban planning and architecture for a few years now. Cities can be understood as social organisms whose built layers of time accumulate and whose historical events can be materially deposited and read. Due to its history, Berlin's cityscape in particular is characterized by earlier destruction, spurts of modernization, and changing models. The mechanisms at work here have mostly been contradictory. The current development is also characterized by great contradiction: left-wing spaces are being cleared and dissolved by the police, and there is a great need for affordable housing or social housing. At the same time, supposedly historical buildings are being reconstructed. Reconstruction projects such as the Berlin City Palace or the Humboldt Forum are prominent examples of this.