The lecture will introduce both research-based and commissioned projects by Studio Folder, with a focus on the concept and realisation behind some of the installations, image-making tools, and maps designed by the studio. Some of the themes raised by the work will also be discussed within the context of studio briefs and their translation and development into a pedagogical environment. With the aim to question long-established narratives on the role of fieldwork, data collection and processing, and visualisation methodologies, the work of Studio Folder tries to question their histories, by interrogating the relationships between live data and the archive, and exploring different modes for the production of spatial knowledge.

Marco Ferrari is the co-founder (with Elisa Pasqual) of Studio Folder, an interdisciplinary design practice based in Milan, working both on commissions in the fields of culture and the arts and on research projects examining the politics and visualisation of spatial data. Together with Elisa Pasqual and Andrea Bagnato, he is the co-author of A Moving Border: Alpine Cartographies of Climate Change, a book based on Studio Folder’s long-term project Italian Limes, and jointly published by Columbia Books on Architecture and the City and ZKM Karlsruhe in 2019. He has been teaching Methods and Tools for Representation at ISIA Urbino between 2010 and 2022, and co-led ADS7 at the Royal College of Art in London between 2019 and 2022. He is currently Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia GSAPP and the head of the MA Information Design at Design Academy Eindhoven.

Studio Folder is a design and research agency founded by Marco Ferrari and Elisa Pasqual, and based in Milan, Italy. The studio’s work spans between the cultural and commercial domains and the investigation of autonomous research paths, while working through a diverse range of outcomes–from data visualisation to the design of exhibitions, editorial products, and digital platforms.