Workshop Chairs 

Jörn Christiansson, Josina Vink & Julia Valle Noronha 

Theme 

Nordes workshops in 2023 will translate the theme of THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK into playful explorations, dialogues and emergent possibilities in practice. What unfolds in spaces free from prescription, in the in-betweens, in the absence? How might collective, practice-based design experiments aid us in exploring the relational, fluid, dynamic and invisible aspects that are often ignored?  

Embracing blank space opens up opportunities for workshops to embrace uncertainty, unknowns, open-endedness and make way for plurality and possibility. What will happen in the void, in the silence, in the emptiness of time and space? The intended outcomes from workshops are expected to be concrete shared experiences with explorative design activities, that can inform or inspire future design research and practice. We invite workshops that explore these and related themes to push the boundaries of design practices and research in its attentiveness to blank spaces. 

Submission 

Workshop proposals need 2 components: a Workshop Description and a Practical Overview. The Workshop Description frames the direction of the exploration, its significance and relevance, as well as the research basis for the workshop. This will be included in the Nordes 2023 Proceedings as a peer-reviewed publication. Use the Nordes paper template. The Workshop Description must be a maximum length of 3 pages excluding references, and a maximum file size of 5 MB.

The Practical Overview is submitted in addition to the workshop description. This provides a summary of the practicalities for running the workshop. Please include in the overview the workshop title; motivation; length of the workshop (we suggest a half day or a full day in-person but will also consider online workshops); a tentative program; a minimum and maximum number of participants; anything participants need to bring; preferred set-up (including space, equipment, supplies, etc.); support needed (technology, materials or other assistance). Please note how you will deal with any related ethical issues, consent and data privacy. 

Submit papers at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=nordes2023 at the latest February 6th.

Evaluation 

Workshop proposals will be evaluated based on the following criteria: 

  1. Experimental nature: Exploration of a novel and compelling aspect of design research and/or practice that challenges the current boundaries of the field and reveal ways of knowing and being that emerge from the blank space or are otherwise overlooked. 
  2. Clear planning: The goals, structure and plan for the workshop are clearly presented with explicitly stated expectations regarding resourcing and realistic support needs. 
  3. Research basis: Evidence of scholarly positioning in a relevant area of design research; connections drawn between practical explorations in the workshop and theoretical concepts and implications.