3rd year studio

Hospitality – Guest, Host and the Act of Hosting

Lecturer: Tal Gur

“An act of hospitality can only be poetic.” *

At a time when digital networks allow us to stay in strangers’ homes, sleep on their couches, and ride in their cars almost anywhere in the world—based on openness, trust, and user ratings—while at the same time wars, oppression, and economic hardship drive millions of people to cross borders in search of a better future, yet also provoke manifestations of suspicion and xenophobia, the concept of hospitality appears to stand at the heart of some of the most significant social, cultural, and political tensions of our time.

This studio will engage with the concept of hospitality as starting point for research and creative exploration. Through reading, discussion, observation, and collaborative inquiry, we will seek to stretch the boundaries of the concept and examine its manifestations in spaces, objects, rituals, and interpersonal relationships. We will explore questions of openness and closure, proximity and distance, generosity, trust, belonging and otherness, and consider how design might reshape the conditions of encounter between guest and host.

Building on this shared investigation, each student will develop an individual conceptual and design research process. The outcome of this process will be a physical object that expresses a personal position toward the concept and offers a new—and perhaps even poetic—interpretation of it.

* From Of Hospitality, Jacques Derrida, Resling Publishing, 2007 (Hebrew edition).