The work of Saija Halko, Hanna-Kaarina Heikkilä and Tuuli Saarelainen from the KAHLA workshop. (c) Tuuli Saarelainen

In spring 2016 Ceramics and its Dimensions: Shaping the Future sub-project organised a student workshop at the KAHLA Porcelain factory in Germany. In the workshop twenty students from four different Universities were invited to work together in a factory setting. The workshop included lectures and demonstrations concentrating mainly on the topics of 3D printing and food culture.

The aim of the workshop was to explore the current and future possibilities of ceramics as a material and a craft. Students had wonderful opportunities to explore all the processes that Kahla Porcelain factory offered along with new 3D printing technology. From the Unfold design studio, Dries Verbruggen was invited to give a lecture about the development of 3D printing in clay. In his online lecture, he introduced their projects and a short history of open source ideology  based ceramic 3D printing in a studio context.

Another very interesting event during the workshop was the dinner experience and a related small workshop organized by the dilettantin produktionsbüro at the end of the workshop. With the dinner experience workshop, the students had the opportunity to explore food culture from a very local and a back-to-earth kind of perspective. Students explored the surrounding nature and collected some ingredients for the dinner that was created by an artist and a chef.