HTW Berlin and the UCA Rochester continues the productive co-operation in contextualising contemporary fashion through a focus on exchange, mobility and movement. The project for the academic year 2012 is based on both the urban environments and contemporary modes of transport that are prevalent across the two institutions.

It focuses on the culture of cycling as expressed through an array of creative developments in (Arnhem/Amsterdam), Berlin and Rochester/London. Cycling has spread from its ubiquitous and well-established structure in Holland and its use as alternative form of mobility in Berlin to London and the South-East of England, where an increasing amount of cycling lanes, public transport provision and storage facilities has introduced belatedly cycling as a mass-concept to the British public. The interplay between social mainstay, transport-alternative and current trend thus animates the three sites of the co-operation and connects cultural positions.

The mobility of students using bicycles is matched by a desired intellectual mobility to integrate their own socio-cultural experiences of cycling into a larger project and apply it to their own creative research and development. Cycling in this context is therefore not understood solely as an activity connected to material hardware through product and fashion design but equally to urban planning, trend forecasting/futurising and contemporary media. The latter places particular emphasis on the relationship between cultural concepts and new brands that articulates the way in which alternative ideas become mainstream fashions.

Projektsprache: Englisch

• Prof. Petra Skupin (Projektleitung)

• University for the Creative Arts (UCA) Rochester