Andstudio left its home in Estonia to swap with another studio in Italy for the Summer
Would you up-sticks and shift your design studio to the other side of the continent? This question arrives following the story of a design office switch for the summer between two previously unconnected studios.
Lithuanian design studio, Andstudio, reached out to several design studios around Europe with an offer to swap their working environments, and 12 studios showed interest with 6 shortlisted, finally a swap for the summer was agreed on with Muttnik, a Florence-based design studio.
The two teams of designers will be living each other’s lives for one month this summer, with the aim of getting the teams ‘familiar with an unfamiliar market and the challenges it poses’.
Admittedly, one studio is a graphic design studio and the other a multidisciplinary studio, but the proposition still applies to product designers – working in someone else’s creative environment – as well as both sides arranging meetings with potential local clients for their counterparts.
“This project has no strings attached – none of the participating parts has to pay anything but their living and travelling expenses,” said Augustinas Paukštė, partner at Andstudio.
“We helped each other with finding where to live, who to meet, what to do. Hopefully, this creative exchange will be just the first of many, and more studios will follow suit.
“Usually, design studios are fierce competitors, but we believe there is much more to gain by collaborating.”
So, in this web connected world, would you be willing to move your studio 1,000 miles away for a short term swap if you could take all your facilities with you?
