In addition to your work as interior designers, you are also active in teaching. At which universities are you currently working?
Susanne Brandherm: I originally started my teaching career at the University of Applied Sciences in Trier. Since the winter semester 2019/2020, I have been teaching exhibition architecture at the Peter Behrens School of Arts in Düsseldorf. The teaching assignment has just been extended to include design.
Sabine Krumrey: Since 2015, I have been working as a lecturer in the Spatial Concept and Design (B.A.) course at the Fresenius University of Applied Sciences, Department of Design | AMD in Hamburg. Parallel to my work as a lecturer, I have been supporting as many as six students with their bachelor’s theses this semester.
What do you find particularly appealing about teaching?
Susanne Brandherm: When I teach, I choose subjects that I would also like to work on myself as a planning task. It’s great fun for me to work with the students. It is simply exciting to help develop the different approaches and creative thought processes of young designers.
Sabine Krumrey: The motivation for this is very simple: it is fun to work with students, to accompany them in their development and to bring them closer to the values and contents of our profession. The reward for this is the younger generation’s eye for the new – this often leads to surprising results.
What projects are you currently working on with your students?
Sabine Krumrey: In joint project work with ProfF”. Stephan Exsternbrink, Chair of Design Processes, I supported and advised two semester years of the Interior Design (B.A.) course in the winter term 2020/2021. One of the tasks we set the 3rd semester students was to develop a large-scale exhibition under the heading “Pandemic Spaces”.
Susanne Brandherm: Last year’s semester project was a film premiere at a cinema in Düsseldorf called “Cinema”. This year we are creating a “Salon on the Water” on the boat “Black Pearl” in Düsseldorf’s Medienhafen. Both projects take place in real spaces.
What exactly are these projects about?
Sabine Krumrey: Looking back from 2024, the project “Pandemic Spaces” aims to show a selection of central moments of social, medical, logistical or psychological challenges for the global society in the years 2020 and 2021. The focus is on an exhibition design with space as a carrier of meaning. The starting point is one’s personal perception of the pandemic period with a special focus on all spatial aspects of closeness and distance. This can include the experience in all spaces of human and social life. The venue for the exhibition is the former Art Kite Museum in Detmold, now Kulturfabrik Hangar 21 (architects von Gerkan, Marg und Partner).
Susanne Brandherm: The idea behind the semester project is to give a print medium a spatial and mobile presence that makes it more visible and approachable. The title “Salon on the Water – a magazine invites” reflects this idea. The students had to choose a print magazine for which the storyboard for the event had to be developed. This was then used as the basis for the elaboration. The boat in Düsseldorf’s Medienhafen was redefined in terms of its spatial structure and atmosphere – corporate identity was the most important parameter for this. Impressive designs were created that would certainly “cause ripples” in real implementation.
