Laurens Kolks

Research Group: Cultural and Creative Industries

‘Well beyond their common characterisation as problem-solvers, designers have a role to play in materialising public engagement with collective concern’

Laurens Kolks was a researcher at the Cultural and Creative Industries research group from 2018 until 2019 and is currently a tutor at St. Joost School of Art & Design.

Laurens graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven in 1999 and obtained his master’s degree in Sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam in 2018 with honours. Laurens gained work experience as an intern at the architectural firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro. In his own practice he subsequently focused on projects at the intersection of design, art and architecture. An important starting point in Laurens’s work is his love-hate relationship with the Dutch compulsion for social engineering and planning. Particularly when it asserts itself in public space or within the public domain.

Laurens has been a tutor at St. Joost School for Art & Design since 2008. He has worked as a guest lecturer at art academies and universities in the Netherlands and abroad, such as the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, TU Delft, Fontys Hogeschool Tilburg, and the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI), Lugano.

PhD

Laurens is currently working on his PhD project at Erasmus University Rotterdam, under the title Disclosing complexity: The articulation of public issues through design.

Social Design Practices (2018 – 2019)

This research project aimed to question, problematise and study the relationship between design and its social context. It starts from an ambivalent research attitude towards the ‘solutionism’ that lies at the basis of many design practices: a view in which designers approach the world from the basic principle of problem-solving. Through a rigid, one-sided application of this paradigm, ‘solutions’ are often designed for ‘problems’ we did not know existed.

Research Group: Cultural and Creative Industries

The research group Cultural and Creative Industries investigates the role of artists and designers as creative innovators and drivers of social and economic change. Affiliated researchers analyse the cultural and creative industries from a critical point of view and examine the conditions under which timely forms of aesthetic expression and social connectedness can actually take place within the precarious reality of this field. What economic models are required by artists and designers to create a meaningful practice within the aesthetic, social, and economic intentions of the cultural and creative industries? What skills sets are required for those artists and designers who don’t just want to follow movements, but actually shape novel social and economic models of the future?

‘Our research group investigates the role artists, designers and cultural producers in general can play in developing the aesthetics and poetics of a desirable future.’

Sebastian Olma

‘‘How will our graduates make a living without selling their soul?’’

Sepp Eckenhaussen

‘In social and cultural research there is increasing importance in research methodologies and devices that cut across fields and disciplines, becoming transdisciplinary.’

Jess Henderson

‘As a result of my current research, I ask the students the questions “what is your work” and “what works for you.’

Rob Leijdekkers

‘How can we disrupt the notion of being human while staying true to being humane?’

Wander Eikelboom

‘How do we live together, how do we work together? How do we give shape and form to ‘being together’ in the broadest sense?’

bas van den hurk

‘Disrupting our contemporary society can be a serious design goal.’

Eke Rebergen

‘Interested in human behaviour as the basics underlying the way we design and innovate our society and economy.’

Marianne van Bommel

‘Within my practice I create spaces for introspection while exploring ethical dilemmas. ’

Renée van Oploo

‘Performance is about engaging with versions of the self, stretching the gaze to see what others see when they look at you.’

Philippine Hoegen

‘Consumers are creatures of habit. If we want them to break routine and live sustainably, we have to do more than just offer sustainable alternatives. ’