Intention With Us


Plattform, 2014 – 2018


.iwu


“intentionwithus” grew out of the desire to work on existing projects with a social and ecological focus beyond the university and to initiate new projects in that realm.
      Robin Weidner and I, the initiators of .iwu, admire the Ulm School of Design and have learned more deeply about the people and ideas. The following quotation of Tomás Maldonado has often inspired us in the achievement of our aims:

“Partnership, whose members share the same intention: to give the human environment structure and content.”

—Tomás Maldonado

We want to create new areas of operation and to work for the general good without collective egoism. We want to help to develop a feeling of moral responsibility that we as designers need. The well-known design philosopher Victor Papanek has already expressed these ideas, and in the past discovered many problems that are all too pertinent today.            A small group of students at the HfG were enthusiastic about our plans to start such a collaborative platform and joined forces with us. The mixture of pending projects, very committed students and knowledge of similar sentiments being expressed in earlier times, encouraged us to go ahead and found “intention with us.”


CONCEPT


The name, while not quite grammatically correct, gives us both structure and calling at the same time: “intention with us” was consciously formulated to show that we as an open partnership are pursuing an intention and are working for it. It is our goal to create new fields of activity that are not motivated by turnover; .iwu hopes to raise people’s awareness of social, ecological, and moral design.

These three short words define the complete structure of our partnership: intention—what we want, with—how we work, and us—who we are.


By ‘with’ we define our way of working together. Respectful dealings, open dialogues, responsible cooperation, and collective moderation are all part of this. The undertaking should also include collaboration with external experts and the organization of lectures and workshops. Our own projects fall into the ‘with’ category as we want to communicate with a broader public and at best, set something in motion.
        ‘us’ stands primarily for the partnership per our motto: we are you, we are us, you are us! We are trying to work as much as possible across courses to use the resulting knowledge, synergies, and experience of older semesters optimally. The partnership is dependent on everybody’s ideas and thoughts and will function only when there are enough people to carry the concept onward.


Credits


︎︎︎ Mitfahrscheibe is a continuing project.
︎︎ intentionwithus.com
︎︎ Feature in FORMAT#14


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