LAETUS

LAETUS is a collaboration program of the Estonian Academy of Arts’ Faculty of Design for forward-thinking and sustainability-conscious companies and organizations who aim to elevate their products or services to the next, more planet-friendly level through new generation design and open innovation.

LAETUS offers companies and organizations a creative approach with new generation design to tackle their business challenges requiring sustainability and human-friendliness, as well as demanding technological solutions. Come, make a creative turn in your organization!

LAETUS addresses various challenges faced by organizations, involving both a far-reaching view towards the future and redesigning existing products and services. The program functions as an innovation lab, where, without disrupting the organization’s daily operations, there’s a focus on sustainability and the exploration of opportunities arising from new technologies based on the partner’s themes, analysis of user experience and identity, development of idea solutions, and more. In industrial design, we see potential partners as innovative entrepreneurs in material development, recycling, or repurposing fields. Additionally, we are open to collaborating with other research groups focusing on biomaterials from other scientific institutions.

The program brings together courses from the EAA’s design field and the business challenges of companies, offering synergy and fruitful collaboration, resulting in sustainable research and development projects that advance all parties.

Simply put, participating companies provide input by describing their challenges, and multidisciplinary student teams from EAA, led by experts from various design fields, set out to solve them. The next LAETUS will take place in autumn 2024 – the application period for the program starting in autumn runs until April 30th. More information:

karin.kiigemagi@artun.ee

APPLICATION FORM FOR PARTICIPATION IN THE PROGRAM

SCHEDULE Autumn 2024

April 30 – Deadline for program applications

May 27 – Announcement of accepted companies into the program

August 22 – Opening workshop of the program, where partner teams, together with EAA mentors, will work on tasks related to the given assignment themes

Early September – Meeting between students and partners

October and November – Design critique sessions or interim reviews

January 23, 2025 – Design Showcase Gala, where solutions developed during the courses will be presented