[website under construction]
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IRENE ALBINO
GRAPHIC DESIGNER / EDUCATOR
GRAPHIC DESIGNER / EDUCATOR
check current initiatives:
/Unorthodox
Herbarium/
more info here ︎︎︎
30 Aug- 6 Sept 2026
The workshop explores how ecological knowledge can be gathered, understood, and shared through acts of foraging and archiving. Whether we are collecting plants, materials, stories, or ways of knowing, participants will experiment with how local ecosystems can inform visual aesthetics, and how materials themselves can become storytellers of place, ecology, and culture.
During the week, we will work with different kinds of recording and sharing (plant observations and analysis, printing, book making, casting), while we are guided by locals to explore the surrounding plant life. This will culminate in an unorthodox herbarium exhibition, welcoming the local communities to celebrate and discuss with us over a meal.
This is an exploration of situated knowledges and shared processes: how knowledge circulates, how materials can serve as archival devices, and how creative practice can become a form of ecological attention.
TUTORS
Emilie Loiseleur
Irene Albino
Who is this for: Designers, artists, plant lovers, curious wanderers.
When: 30 Aug- 6 Sept 2026
Where: Alta Langa, Piedmont, Italy
Hosted by: Banca del Fare
/Unorthodox
Herbarium/
more info here ︎︎︎
30 Aug- 6 Sept 2026
The workshop explores how ecological knowledge can be gathered, understood, and shared through acts of foraging and archiving. Whether we are collecting plants, materials, stories, or ways of knowing, participants will experiment with how local ecosystems can inform visual aesthetics, and how materials themselves can become storytellers of place, ecology, and culture.
During the week, we will work with different kinds of recording and sharing (plant observations and analysis, printing, book making, casting), while we are guided by locals to explore the surrounding plant life. This will culminate in an unorthodox herbarium exhibition, welcoming the local communities to celebrate and discuss with us over a meal.
This is an exploration of situated knowledges and shared processes: how knowledge circulates, how materials can serve as archival devices, and how creative practice can become a form of ecological attention.
TUTORS
Emilie Loiseleur
Irene Albino
Who is this for: Designers, artists, plant lovers, curious wanderers.
When: 30 Aug- 6 Sept 2026
Where: Alta Langa, Piedmont, Italy
Hosted by: Banca del Fare
STEEPING
Residency project with Design Inquiry at Banca del Fare
10-16th Sept 2026
more info here ︎︎︎
To steep is to saturate someone or something, such as soaking leaves, grapes or herbs in liquid. From a different root, the adjective steep denotes a gradient, an incline, as in a learning curve that cannot be climbed without effort and duration. Common to both definitions is the condition of time, and what time does to things that are willing to be changed by it. The tea leaves swell up, the traveller returns home steeped in the aromas of the mountains. This Inquiry takes that process as its subject. Can this kind of transformation be anticipated and cultivated? Steeping raises questions about quantities, qualities and temporalities: What we’re bringing to the host environment, how long we should be steeping it in the new surroundings, and how both ingredient and state might be transformed.
At Banca del Fare, an educational farmhouse in rural Italy, where visitors share knowledge, traditional building techniques and design activities through “learning by doing”, DesignInquiry will be exploring the topic of steeping.
Applications are now open
Residency project with Design Inquiry at Banca del Fare
10-16th Sept 2026
more info here ︎︎︎
To steep is to saturate someone or something, such as soaking leaves, grapes or herbs in liquid. From a different root, the adjective steep denotes a gradient, an incline, as in a learning curve that cannot be climbed without effort and duration. Common to both definitions is the condition of time, and what time does to things that are willing to be changed by it. The tea leaves swell up, the traveller returns home steeped in the aromas of the mountains. This Inquiry takes that process as its subject. Can this kind of transformation be anticipated and cultivated? Steeping raises questions about quantities, qualities and temporalities: What we’re bringing to the host environment, how long we should be steeping it in the new surroundings, and how both ingredient and state might be transformed.
At Banca del Fare, an educational farmhouse in rural Italy, where visitors share knowledge, traditional building techniques and design activities through “learning by doing”, DesignInquiry will be exploring the topic of steeping.
Applications are now open
