Designer Lucas Maassen’s introductory workshops for Design Academy Eindhoven MA students provide hypothetical stages for students to experiment in performing the hierarchies of freethinking and free doing. In doing so their insecurities become transformative tools. Whether it’s a workshop wherein students force their bodies into physical disabilities while exploring method acting, or a weeklong survival camp spent in a cold fake church built by the Nazis; the experience drives a red flag into the hardened ground of established educational models.
This zine uses firsthand accounts of four of Maassen’s students as a means of analysis. Each of the workshops is critically engaged with through the emotional response of the participants, creating a snapshot of what this approach to education does to the individual and the lingering lessons they learnt.