Stuck on a blank canvas? Collateral Strategies is here to help. 

Our collection of 55 evocative cards, each containing a unique claim, is tailored to overcome creative blocks and inspire new perspectives. Each card features a thought-provoking statement that any creative person can interpret. Simply draw one card, let it inspire you and elevate your designs to the next level. 
Innovative design requires innovative tools that foster experimentation and lateral thinking, and Collateral Strategies aims to be just that. A perfect addition to your creative arsenal.

Unlock your creative potential with Collateral Strategies. 1 deck, 55 high quality evocative cards, 55 evocative claims.

Whenever you encounter a creative block, just draw one card and let its claim inspire you. Elevate your design to the next level.

55 cards, 100% creative inspiration.

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in medias res is an ongoing selective collection of seemingly random online images as well as self-taken screenshots and photography. Featuring a selection of over 1200 pictures out of the personal archive, it deals with patterns of recognition, appropriation and contextualization of (popular) cultures. By reproduction through means of hard copy a shift of attention shall be provoked (in favor of THE IMAGE).

Following musical techniques of plunderphonics, the mode of situating and framing finds manifestation from 15th century renaissance art (emblem) through to present operating principles of the social media online platform instagram (hashtags). 
Focusing on reciprocal influence and interference between text and image, the project aims to intentionally subvert cultural codes of visual content and wording by allegory and metaphor. 
Associated figures of thought, socio-political terms, new slang, ambiguous terms of marketing and connotated phrases are addressed to expand (semiotic) nuances and undertones of modern day society (consumer culture, mainstream-noise, fashion-dynamics, politics / environmental issues), thus to challenge ways of perception of cultural sets of phenomena (meme).. 
Of course, a certain sense of humor is a substantial attitude of indifference to ride the jittering stream that shapes contours of global scenes of references and re-production of “meaning” through poor images.

in medias res is a context bundle. 
in medias res is a deep learning process. 
in medias res is highly subjective.

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Reprtoire 8 zeigt berührende Fragmente aus Architektur und Kunst, Theorie und Realität, die ohne Hierarchie und Sortierung und vor allem ohne Anspruch auf Vollständigkeit assoziativ zu einer Sammlung gefügt sind. Die unendlich aufeinander verweisenden Bilder, Zeichnungen und Texte zeigen ein Formenrepertoire, das Grundlage ist für einen architektonischen Diskurs, der nicht mit der eigenen Problemlösung beginnt, sondern mit der Erschaffung eines Kenntniskosmos der Ideen.

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Heft 7 der Reihe Repertoire enthält Beobachtungen – Bilder, Zeichnungen und Texte von Häusern und Räumen – der in Berlin lebenden Architektin Oda Pälmke, die sich wie bei einem ­Entwurf gegenseitig ergänzen und zunehmend ineinander verweben. Es ist eine Einladung, die Autorin auf ihren Spaziergängen und Reisen in die Welt zu begleiten oder, vielleicht ebenso gut, die Publikation zum Anlass für eigene Explorationen zu nehmen.

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“Repertoire” shows a collection of drawings and photographs of common situations and elements of the built environment and may inspire the natural expansion of the design repertoire. 

Issue 7 of the Repertoire series contains observations – pictures, drawings and texts of houses and spaces – by the Berlin-based architect Oda Pälmke, which complement each other like a design and increasingly interweave. It is an invitation to accompany the author on her walks and trips around the world or, perhaps as well, to use the publication as an opportunity for her own explorations.

“Oda Pälmke’s way of working is characterized by the methodology of appropriation, the appropriation of found material. It is a strategy that allows a fruitful examination of the real. Casual and trivial, found and invented develop new levels of meaning through their specific way of working through. If everything can once again become “starting material for transformations”, everything can again become “raw material for productions”, says Peter Sloterdijk, there is no creative creation ex nihilo and the modern phantasm of tabula rasa is overcome. The creative process then consists in finding an attitude towards what has been found and developing a story from it. ”(Anh-Linh Ngo, publisher ARCH +)

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Repertoire zeigt eine Sammlung von Zeichnungen und Fotografien gewöhnlicher Situationen und Elemente der gebauten Umwelt und mag zur selbstverständlichen Erweiterung des entwerferischen Repertoires anregen.

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“Repertoire” shows a collection of drawings and photographs of common situations and elements of the built environment and may inspire the natural expansion of the design repertoire.

Repertoire 1 – GESTALT Häuser / FORM Houses
Repertoire 2 – STRUKTUR Oberflächen / STRUCTURE Surfaces
Repertoire 3 – STANDARD Badezimmer / STANDARD Bathrooms
Repertoire 4 – AUSSTATTUNG Mobiliar / EQUIPMENT Furniture
Repertoire 5 – ÜBERGANG Treppen / TRANSITION Stairs
Repertoire 6 – SITUATION Konstellationen / SITUATION Constellations

“Oda Pälmke’s way of working is characterized by the methodology of appropriation, the appropriation of found material. It is a strategy that allows a fruitful examination of the real. Casual and trivial, found and invented develop new levels of meaning through their specific way of working through. If everything can once again become “starting material for transformations”, everything can again become “raw material for productions”, says Peter Sloterdijk, there is no creative creation ex nihilo and the modern phantasm of tabula rasa is overcome. The creative process then consists in finding an attitude towards what has been found and developing a story from it. ”(Anh-Linh Ngo, publisher ARCH +)

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“Amaneceres Domésticos. Temas de vivienda colectiva en la Europa del siglo XXI” presenta, a partir de obras construidas, los temas principales que van modelando la vivienda colectiva europea en el siglo XXI. A través de una serie de conceptos, ejemplificados con proyectos construidos, sus editores, Carmen Espegel, Andrés Cánovas y José María de Lapuerta, proponen un lugar de reflexión y debate sobre el presente y el futuro de los espacios que habitamos. A través de 28 ejemplos paradigmáticos de vivienda construida organizados en torno a siete categorías: Conciencia climática, Recargas activas, Cuidados domésticos, Nueva gestión, Contextos urbanos, Vivir y compartir e Identidades icónicas, más un epílogo COVID se muestran los conceptos fundamentales de la nueva habitabilidad que se están desarrollando en la vivienda colectiva de la Europa de principios del siglo XXI, propiciando de este modo un debate que permita continuar avanzando en este sentido.

Textos de Carmen Espegel, Andrés Cánovas, José María de Lapuerta, Eduardo Prieto, Almudena Ribot, Hilde Heynen, Marina Otero Verzier, Elli Mosayebi, Amparo Lasén, Uriel Fogué y Javier Echeverría
Diseño: gráfica futura
Traducción: Noemí Gª Millán y Mike Lumber
Edición: Fundación ICO, Ministerio de Transportes, Movilidad y Agenda Urbana (MITMA) y Ediciones Asimétricas

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Fall 2000 issue of Nest: A Quarterly of Interiors. 

Special edition wrapped with a plastic slipcover.

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Pocket-sized street furniture catalogue expresses love for scraps of wood, tattered oilcloth, pieces of organolith and other derelict materials. This furniture is super-nature layer dissolved in our cities. Collection of furniture is protected from the modern habits of fast consumption and meets the highest aesthetic standards. It is free of superficial, fashionable tendencies. Through its simplicity and logic, it reflects the honesty and authenticity of the materials from which it is made.

Numbered, third edition of 50
2022

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Creating, traveling, drawing, and building: such is the DNA of the exuberant architect and designer Marcelo Joulia. Driven from his home country of Argentina by the 1976 military coup, this personal trauma gave him the strength to be a great builder. For thirty years, his agency Naço —‘intuition’ in the Guarani language—has been the laboratory of a global and inventive architecture, aiming to decompartmentalise genres and trades, and mixing knowledge, arts, and professional backgrounds together. Belonging to no specific school, and fiercely attached to his independence and freedom, he has imagined a unique creative space in which expertise and rigor both flourish within the domains of luxury, urban mobility, and major architecture. As an insatiable adventurer, he is able to take an interest in anything —large-scale buildings, design, furniture, bicycles, boats— while not denying himself anything. His passion revolves around teamwork and bringing talents together to conceive of new worlds. As an epicurean, a generous person passionate about art and gastronomy, Marcelo Joulia creates places in his image: unique, welcoming, and always dynamic.

This book showcases the vision of a man and an agency that has surrounded itself with the best and strived to bring to life a demanding and iconoclastic architecture, and carry it forth into the future.

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‘Critical Designers’ produced by an increasing number of design schools are prompted to address social, political and environmental issues through their practices. Yet, who can afford to continue such effort after graduation?

In a dynamic style holding multiple voices, “Who Can Afford To Be Critical?” discusses the limits that affordability, class and labour impose upon the educational promise of holding a ‘critical’ practice. Why do we tend to ignore the material and socioeconomic constraints that bind us as designers, claiming instead that we can be powerful agents of change? In fact, where does our agency lie?

Instead of focusing on the dream of ethical work under capitalism, could we, instead, focus first on designers’ own working conditions, targeting them as one immediate site for collective action? And can we engage politically with the world not necessarily as designers, but as workers, as activists, as citizens?

With contributions by Silvio Lorusso, J. Dakota Brown, Marianela D’Aprile, Evening Class, Somnath Batt, Danielle Aubert, Jack Henrie Fisher, Alan Smart, Greg Mihalko and DAE students 2021/2022.

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