My teaching starts in the studio, with materials: direct encounters, hands-on engagement, working-with rather than -on. Students are guided to document through tools they already own and know. Here processes and the paths of practice matter more than mere outcomes.
The underlying idea I try to ground on is what I call, in my research, symbiotic conviviality: making as co-existing survivals, where tools enable self-organisation rather than control or mastery. In my courses we aim at ways of practising that are attentive, adaptive, and grounded in the students' worlds and values.
Pedagogical Approach
Acknowledgement as pedagogy
Knowledge emerges through correspondence with others (materials, systems, cultures) whose agencies may exceed our comprehension yet remain essential to meaningful practices. In my work, I call this acknowledgement defined as an epistemic act of being present with what we cannot fully understand. Teaching becomes in this space a process of learning to notice, to attune, to respond, to surrender while embracing the un-known.
Process over polish
Sketchbooks, logs, and reflections are the primary tools where documentation makes "things" visible and accessible to others. The question is not "what did you make?" but "what did you notice?/what did you think?"
Presenting = Documenting = Archiving
When documenting processes, we are simultaneously preparing presentations and creating resources for future selves and other learners. These archives become a learning resource and the grounding we carry into future practices.
Material engagement
We cook eggs to understand transformation. We work glass to learn what it means to attune with presence rather than to impose our will. We bake bread to experience fermentation as co-existing survivals.
Experience
| Period | Role | Context |
|---|---|---|
| 2018–2019 | University Teacher, Aalto University | Experimental Design (BA + MA, head teacher), Design Traditions (BA, head teacher), Personal Exploration (MA, support teacher to Maarit Mäkelä) |
| 2019–2020 | Designer in Residence, Aalto University | Glass Challenge (MA, co-teacher with Kirsti Taiviola), Glass Summer School (MA, co-teacher with Kirsti Taiviola), Curating and Storytelling (MA, support teacher to Maarit Mäkelä and Julia Lohmann) |
| 2020–2021 | Glass Challenge (MA, co-teacher with Kirsti Taiviola) | Aalto University |
| 2015 | Seminars at ABC Doctoral School | Politecnico di Milano: "Functional packaging and the shelter as a kit" |
| Ongoing | Thesis supervision | 5 advised, 6 examined. EMPIRICA research group workshops. |
Portfolio of Selected Courses
SYMBIOSIS: Experimental Design BA
We explored what it means to design -with rather than -for. The course opened with the Egg Workshop: pairs of students cooked, baked, and combined eggs to propose five material experiments, each documented with record cards detailing ingredients, tools, and results, thinking through material transformation and agency before any brief. From this shared foundation, each student proposed and defined their studio focus within the theme through personal interests, guided and free readings, and discussions. The course ended in a collective exhibition where process documentation sat alongside finished work.
SYMBIOTIC MACHINE: Experimental Design MA
The tension in the course theme title is deliberate. Throughout the industrial paradigm, we split nature into pieces, understanding it as a machine, a functional supplier of material and resources to be extracted. The friction between "symbiotic" (the co-existence we might aim for) and "machine" (what we need to rethink) became the space for inquiry. Can a symbiotic machine exist (at all)?
In this course we had no conventional presentations but weekly sketchbook submissions were the only required output: the readings discussion, critique, peer exchange, and assessment tool that made the thinking process visible and accessible. We shifted away from performing competence to documenting discoveries, encounters, and personal positionings and perspectives.
Glass Summer School: Nuutajärvi
Two and a half weeks at Finland's oldest glass-making site active in continuous transformation since the eighteenth century, now part of Finland's Intangible Cultural Heritage. Design students from Aalto and glass blowing students from Tavastia were brought together in the same hot shop to crack-away from the exploitative master/executor dichotomies. We lived and worked together with daily furnace rotations, debriefing sessions, shared cottages and communal meals.
By working side by side for a prolonged time, we explored where knowledge and design actually happen. Across roles, materials, and processes, dispersed and disseminated well beyond any single (designer's) head.
Glass Challenge
Here glass was treated as a lens for systemic inquiry. What does glass leave behind? What are its relationships with energy, extraction, craft traditions, local knowledge? Our desire was not to produce finished artefacts but to challenge, critique, and unmake (through practice, experimentation, and critical readings) the paradigms that replicate unsustainable routines.
We worked on three alternative conceptual tracks: organic growth and symbiotic matter; autarky, self-sufficiency, and terroir; reproduction, serialisation, and mutation.
Thesis Supervision
I advise and examine theses at MA level, with particular interest in practice-led research, posthumanist and new materialist frameworks, material agency, fermentation and living materials, and documentation in creative practice.
Advised
- Pedro Pablo Garcia Alcazar, Habitual, use of habits and rituals in product design (Aalto, 2021)
- Mary McPartland, Hull of a home: Vessel as refuge and experience (Aalto, 2020)
- Simona Kliuciute, Up-cycling Textiles (Aalto)
- Nicoletta Marangoni, Ri-costruzione, a new social service for people with mental illness (Politecnico di Milano, 2016)
- Emanuele Carbone, Ermes. Designing of a local platform for welcoming services communication for immigrants (Politecnico di Milano, 2014)
Examined
- Jimin Hong, Designing an Ecological Death: Ways of Giving the Body Back to Nature (Aalto, 2025)
- Greta Ballschuh, The Human Factor: Finding a design solution for former gravel pits with an ecosocial approach (Aalto, 2025)
- Carlos André Correia Alves, Sugar Wonders (Aalto, 2021)
- Mariana Solis Escalera, Weaving landscapes (Aalto, 2020)
- Maiju Eliisa Koskela, The Herbarium Project (Aalto, 2019)
- Olli Silvennoinen, Patterns of Nature (Aalto)
- Liisa Poskiparta, Visual Literacy, Printed Media as Art Material (Aalto)
Available For
- Teaching and research positions in design, materials, and experimental practice
- Guest lectures and seminars on material agency, symbiotic conviviality, practice-led research
- Workshop design and facilitation (e.g. bread, fermentation, material transformation)
- Course design consultation for programs integrating material, design, and critical inquiry
- Research collaborations with groups working on food, craft, making, sustainability
Languages: English (C2), Italian (native), French (B1), German (B1)
For teaching inquiries, collaborations, or conversations:
giabardo**at**gmail**dot**com