Take a coffee with your neighbour
Home-making
The target group chosen to be investigated in this project is the community of Brazilian women living in Cologne. In case you haven’t heard about it, home-making is a process that can be self-driven by the person who has experienced displacement or it can be held by agents which are responsible for or interested in helping immigrants to develop or strengthen a sense of home in the foreign country.
In the research phase, we focused on getting to know them a bit better for which we developed an online survey and personal interviews with some of them, to achieve a deeper understanding of the challenges they encountered upon arrival in the city, as well as their existing practises which helped them building a sense of belonging individually in their current homes, as well as collectively in the urban context. On the first phase, each of us chose one particular way to design a product that should enhance our sense of home while living in a foreign country. The initiator encouraged us to reflect on our own migration journey, as all of us had experienced migration in our lives and to explore design possibilities in the field we are most motivated about. Based on the research findings, reflections on our own journeys and personal interests, we developed four design stories about immigration, home-making, sense of belonging all targeted at the Brazilian women who collaborated in the project during the first phase.
Result
I based mine idea on the ritual “taking a coffee with your neighbor” In order to make this experience more easy an interactive to make.The final outcome consists on a tray with is at the same time portable, lightweight and rough enough to be placed on external surfaces, such as concrete or grass.
