The Future of Design in Dialogue with the City
Young Matters is the pedagogical component of the Design Signals program, operating as a summer school that connects students from various disciplines with the local academic and production ecosystem. Initiated in strategic partnership with the Politehnica University of Timișoara (UPT), the program uses pedagogy as a design method aimed at shaping future practitioners by addressing contemporary social and environmental challenges. Through experimental workshops and field explorations, the program creates a collaborative learning space that breaks down barriers between faculties, encouraging young people to blend technology with personal narratives to propose sustainable solutions.
In 2023, the program debuted within the Bright Cityscapes edition with the Atlas of Distances workshop, a collaboration between UPT and international institutes such as Design Academy Eindhoven and TU Delft. This first edition tested the program's educational foundation, inviting students to map the literal and conceptual distances between academic disciplines and city life. Participants explored Timișoara on foot and by boat, developing projects such as "Adaptive Reclaim," which demonstrated how design can respond to urban needs through the regeneration of existing materials and structures.
The 2024 edition, held under the theme Woven Secrets, focused on bridging the gap between design and disciplines such as medicine, engineering, or computer science, emphasizing the neighborhood context as a space for intergenerational interaction. The workshop, coordinated by tutors Bianca Schick, Domitille Debret, and Connor Cook, encouraged students to explore "what matters to young people" beyond the boundaries of the textile industry. The main outcome, the project "From – To", consisted of visual essays in the form of letters addressed to the city, later transformed into virtual worlds through 3D scans, offering a utopian vision of Timișoara’s future.
In 2025, the Chemical Bonds edition explored chemistry as a fundamental lens for design through three thematic workshops: "Timișoara: The City Beneath the Skin" (tutors Ro Perez Gayo, Oana Gavriliuc), "Air Quality" (tutors Federico Santarini, Fabio Salvadori, Marian Ionascu), and "Rare Earth" (tutor Anna Diljá Sigurðardóttir). Students worked to make invisible chemical processes tangible, creating air quality monitoring units and interactive urban installations that communicate environmental data in real time. At the same time, they investigated material resources such as copper, connecting Romania's mining heritage with the challenges of the global energy transition and transforming scientific data into educational and social experiences.