Photo by Amelia Stier

This summer, a group of Art Center students are immersing themselves in the culturally rich city of Berlin as part of Art Center’s cutting-edge take on traditional exchange programs called TestLabs.

In TestLabs, a group of students are selected representing a variety of disciplines, then placed in a metropolitan locale where they meet up with a corporate or nonprofit sponsor. The sponsor presents the students with a specific design challenge, which becomes their focus for the term. From there, the students form a pop-up studio, which becomes home base for ideation and instant visualization.

Through TestLab Berlin, Art Center students are spending the summer in the German city. The project includes a pop-up studio located at Bikini Berlin site, and is the start of a three-year partnership with GmbH.

In the current project, sponsored by Johnson & Johnson, students are exploring ways to connect with Millennials using different areas of emphasis including music, fashion, sports, body modification and health and wellness.

Amelia Stier has set up a blog documenting the experience—be sure to follow along as the term progresses!