BEP

Beloiannisz Education Program

BEP

We can observe the growing distance between humans and the natural world, and the increasingly destructive impact of human activity on nature behind the ecological processes taking place on the globe.

For the sake of our own future and that of the world as we know it today, we must reestablish a healthy balance. This harmony in human-nature-object culture is characterized by proper proportions and approaches. We need to communicate these goals to children in a comprehensive way. This allows them to understand the gravity, current state and possibilities of the climate and sustainability issues that influence our planet.

The Beloiannisz Education Program seeks to deepen environmental education and to shape the attitudes of primary school children in the early stages of their development. At the core of the project is a full-day boat trip packed with gamified activities. Beyond encountering environmental issues, children will have a chance to learn about the values of shipping and to examine cultural issues. They can learn, for instance, why it is worthwhile and necessary to save, refurbish and restore old utility devices to protect their original values and how all that can contribute to the creation of new values in the world.

The restauration of the ship is taking place now. Here you can follow the process online.

3S

Sustainable Shipping by Sail

Research and Development Project for Sustainable Ocean Farming and its related Fairtransport Infrastructure

What is the 3S program about?

3S is an on-going research and development project that directly fits into the educational model of ember.institute. Design students who apply to our institute may also join our researchers in the work. This cooperation facilitates the shaping of their responsible thinking while enhancing the quality of their professional training in design. The project seeks to find a solution for renewing the entire prospective European ocean farming method, and via this it would facilitate the development of its food supply and reduce the ecological load.

sail boat

The field works of 3S program are taking place in the surroundings of the Træna islands, Norway, in close cooperation with Air Træna.

We are currently constructing a complete system for the residents of Træna Island and support the renewal of its prospective ocean farming infrastructure with a shipping system. This system not only serves the carbon neutral production of sea food but is also capable of transporting these goods to the mainland, and transport other goods to the islands. In the future this model could be implemented by numerous European coastal locations.

HMS

High Mountain School

Why we must leave our comfort zones behind?

Designers have never had to take such a great responsibility as far as global social and economical matters are concerned, as nowadays. The constructed environment, in spite of all of its safety, deprives us of perceiving the deeper layers.

Consequently, we need a school in the mountains, in the wild nature, which provides us a platform to investigate the deeper layers of our perception, conformity and mindset.

How we, as designers, shall work together on a mountain school?

The only way to work effectively on this mountain school is to make sure that we invite those students of design for planning this building, who will later have a chance to participate in the institute’s educational program. Therefore we are cooperating with a number of European universities whose students - along with our other designers - are important participants of the program from its inception.

What we would like to build?

inside-outside connection

inside-outside connection

variable furnitures

We are working on a high-altitude autonomous mountain school that can houses up to ten people. We have radically minimized the spatial dimensions of the buildings, which is currently below 50 sqm. We are working on smart, cutting-edge technical and aesthetic solutions to make sure that the school ecologically pays respect to its natural surroundings, which in turn inspires the people staying in it.

blue print

Who we are

This is our team. You can read more about ember.institute's vision here: show more

Who we are?

Our team members have various backgrounds from social sciences, through design, engineering, architecture till economy. We have an advisory board, experts with diverse knowledge and skills from all over Europe. Since our main focus is education we have already been in partnerships with the main universities from Europe and constantly working on new collaborations.


What is it?

The ember.institute is a non-profit research institute with the aim to establish various educational environments where human and nature can be reconnected. The main goal of the institute is to build a platform where we as humans can rethink our presence on the Earth using various non-formal education models and the respect of nature for a new way of thinking, working and existing.


Why?

ABSTRACT

ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS-RAISING THROUGH THE ADAPTION OF DESIGNCOMMUNICATION

In contemporary culture, environmental responsibility receives increased attention not only in everyday life but also in school practice. I argue that school presence provides the most adequate context in Hungary for the group acquisition of environmental knowledge. The present Hungarian curriculum, however, fails to address the issues of excessive energy use and natural alienation. The starting point of my research is the creation of an autonomous research organization - which can be linked to the Hungarian school education system - that builds and develops innovative environmental education programs. The operational model of the research organization is based on leaving the comfort zone.

I adapted the framework of designcommunication (Cosovan 2009) to my proposed empirical model, for it provides the most powerful combination of design thinking and pedagogical methodology. The delimitation of the age group is based on child psychological and personality developmental research papers (Mérei - V. Binét 2006; Cole - Cole 2006), which find that children aged 8-12 show an increased openness towards phenomena in the external world. This openness, I argue, ought to be enhanced by an additional training program tailored specifically for university students who are in the first three years of their undergraduate programs and have not started to pursue their careers yet.

The objective of my research is to lay the foundations of a research organization and its communication platform, which aspires to balance the use of virtual and tangible content, and to develop top-notch programs by removing the participants from their usual socio-cultural contexts (the community described in the case study consisted of ten university students). My doctoral dissertation focuses on the organization and discusses its three projects, and pays particular attention to the HMS program, a school project in the high mountain region of the Austrian Alps.

Keywords: environmental education, designcommunication, awareness-raising, leaving the comfort zone.


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Ember, when it was founded in 2010 in Budapest, started off as a for-profit design studio, focusing predominantly on topics related to industrial as well as graphic design. During the years a number of members changed, and the scope of activities also expanded to include research-development and manufacturing. Later, in 2019, the company transformed into a non-profit research institute under the name ember.institute and moved its headquarters to Austria.

The idea came from the realisation of our CEO, István Policsányi’s PhD research where he underscored the excessively negative impact of design on ecological processes. Besides that there are directions in current creative industry researches which emphasise the huge impact of designers’ work without any working ethical practice. Our institute aims to change this process and initiate a new model for educating the future of creators.


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