The Kinship Method experiments with collaborative design

It is an experimental project with five participating designers, all linked to Beckman College of Design, which challenges and examines methods, designer roles and design production. The project is part of Beckman's investment in artistic subject development at the school.

- This project has been on my mind for quite a few years. I've been missing different ways of working together that are more exploratory and force us to reflect more on our own practice and our design footprint. In our part of the design world, it's more fixated on the person than the outcome, I think," says Margot Barolo, designer and program manager at Product design and initiator of the project.

A kind of design relay

The project starts with five individual chairs, all designed by each of the participants in the space of a month and without telling the others in the group anything about the design. The chairs are then passed on according to a predetermined schematic order to the next designer, who thus does not know which chair it will get. The designer will once again have one month to design a new chair where 20-40 percent of the shape from the previous chair, designed by someone else, remains.

The process then repeats itself at least once more. Each generation and stage culminates in them coming together for a 'group therapy' session. The idea is to reflect and verbalize all the thoughts and positions that arise during the process in a safe forum where everyone is equally excluded. What happens to your product design when you are forced to use someone else's product design? How easy is it to give and take? What happens to forms and results when the chairs go from individual projects to inherited parts and fragments from each generation?

"What's interesting to see is: what's this going to be? Does it merge into something fairly uniform? says Margot Barolo in an interview with journalist Salka Hallström Bornold, who is part of and has taken on the role of moderator and writer in the project. All participants in addition to the five designers have a free hand within the framework of the project to carry out their parts. Samira Baoubana will work with the visually communicative and Karin Björkquist is a photographer documenting the project.

Fifteen chairs with form elements of five designers

The second generation of chairs has recently been completed by furniture manufacturer Mitab and is ready to meet in group therapy to be passed on for the next designer to take over. It won't be until 2020 that we will see the full result of the project, fifteen chairs made up to varying degrees of design elements by the five different designers. In the meantime, a longer excerpt from the group's first session of group therapy can be found in Product design Magazine No. 3 2019.