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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 /

p153 Gated Freedom

Gated communities are guarded, usually privately managed residential complexes that promise security and protection due to their structural characteristics. “A society formed by a minority that exists in a country alongside the society of the majority”—parallel societies. Security and comfort are the expectations, but the existence of these housing estates often makes social differences more visible than without them. Social and political demarcation does not only take place visibly through fences and walls, but is also an expression of social developments, which have now been manifested in concrete and steel. How future-proof are these housing models in a society in which the gap between rich and poor is widening? Is the emergence of parallel societies part of the solution or part of the problem? If public space is privatized and access is only granted if the wallet has the appropriate contents, prosperity becomes an island.