Campus.Workshops
The Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW offers its students, teachers, and staff members excellently equipped workshops for working metal, wood, plastics, and ceramics. In addition, we have the appropriate facilities for rapid prototyping, book binding, screen printing as well as a paint shop and a sculptor’s studio along with a sewing studio.
Whether they’re working with wood, metal or plastic, or doing rapid prototyping, painting, sewing or digital fabrication in the BauRaum.Workshops; or sculpting, screen printing or bookbinding in the Pavillon.Workshops; working in the photo, video and audio labs, multimedia workstations, darkrooms and Media lending system in the Media.Workshop: the university’s on-campus workshops provide students with opportunities to learn a variety of analogue techniques and acquire digital know-how. The workshops are open to students, lecturers and staff, and accessible nearly all year round. They can be used for project work in teaching and research.
Introductory courses teach users the basics to ensure they can work safely and independently in the Campus.Workshops. Depending on the study programme and curriculum, different combinations of workshop courses are mandatory. For interested students, additional courses tailored to a specific academic focus are offered by the faculty wherever possible. Workshop heads provide support with their comprehensive professional knowledge and information on specific technologies, tools and processes.
The work performed by all users in the Campus.Workshops is based on individual responsibility with regard to safety and health protection as well as solidarity towards other users. The workshops place an emphasis on sustainability, i.e. the responsible use of materials, devices and machines.
A team of tutors who all have a background in the particular trade supervise the students during open workshop hours. Once they have successfully passed the introductory course for a workshop, students can independently carry out academic projects in that workshop or with help from the workshop heads.
Students can rent audio, video, photography, lighting and presentation equipment at the Media lending system of the Media.Workshop.
The Academy's infrastructure is state-of-the-art, and the workshops offer a wide selection of appropriate machines, including competent guidance and support – a place that sparks curiosity and inspires interdisciplinary work.
Thanks to the students’ initiative, the openness of the heads of the various institutes, and the commitment of the workshop staff, this is the place for a constructive dialogue.
Studying means searching for new answers all the time. During work on my degree project, I got the chance to think outside the box thanks to the support of the workshop staff; this encouraged me to venture into media and methods of implementation that I was completely unaware of at the time.
Campus workshops. That sounds like a lot of work but, actually, it means much more: inspiration, knowledge, exchange, and a good place to meet friends!