L’École de design Nantes Atlantique

From Exploration to Appropriation

Appropriating a new culture is a long-term process whereby you must adjust your gaze upon the world and question your own references. We, designers, are used to do so because we are always expected to explore new angles in order to find innovative solutions.

What’s with our thought process once we are thrown into a new cultural environment? Does it get revisited? Inspired? Cross-bred?

Which paths should we take to make sure we avoid cutting-and-pasting methods and propositions — as happens all-too-often — and to provide professional solutions truly infused with the cultural context?

Now that globalization prevails all over the world, transculturality is a strength that must be counted with; which entails trying out tools and keys to come to a better understanding of cultures, how they interact and adapt.

Budding Entrepreneurs in an Emerging Country

This pioneering Transcultural Design program co-founded with Bangalore-based Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology enables French and Indian students to acquire a truly entrepreneur-like approach to design, to sharpen their creative and critical mind and to rely on research so as to develop innovative products and services adapted to emerging markets.

To help them take up this challenge, our educational team strives to help students acquire and appropriate the following notions:

- responsible innovation,

- interaction,

- ethnography,

- cultural blend.

Because Srishti School of Art and Design’s Research Lab has an extended network of industrial partners, our students can create bonds with local and international companies – specifically with their Research and Development Departments. They can then further their field exploration of transcultural design through a mandatory professional internship.