Workshop – Design your Souvenir

Design Your Souvenir is a workshop framework conceived and developed by Studio Paparkone for exploring place through its participants, local traditions and cultural context.

In Osaka, a mixed group of adult participants without professional design experience explored the dōrei, a traditional Japanese bell souvenir, reimagining its morphology and meaning in relation to their own cultural backgrounds and places of origin. The result was a series of objects that were personal, critical and deeply rooted in place.

In Barcelona, design students developed ceramic objects inspired by local craft traditions, Modernista aesthetics and gastronomic culture. Alongside the objects, they developed a complete proposition encompassing storytelling, naming, packaging and distribution.

Across different contexts, the workshop always returns to the same core question:

 “What does a place actually look like when you stop consuming it and start observing it?