Rethinking Bodies – Design beyond Norms

Design does not only shape objects, but also relationships between bodies, spaces, and their environments. It influences which forms of movement, perception, and temporality are taken for granted, and which bodies are considered the norm. Now, what ideas of bodies and abilities does design reproduce — and which ones remain invisible? In this sense, design contributes to the production of social norms while also offering possibilities to question and challenge them.

Drawing on perspectives from Crip Theory, Disability Justice, and critical approaches to Inclusive Design, F9 – powered by 1822 & HfG invites students and graduates of the Department of Design at HfG Offenbach to submit work that explores bodies beyond normative assumptions and examines the relationships between bodies, things, spaces, and social conditions.

Writers and scholars such as Alison Kafer and Aimee Hamraie describe disability not as an individual characteristic, but as a category that emerges through its interaction with social, spatial, and material conditions. From this perspective, the focus of design also shifts. The question is no longer simply how bodies can adapt to existing environments, but rather which ideas of bodies and abilities design itself presupposes — and what possibilities emerge when accessibility, care, and interdependence become starting points for design processes.

F9 Art Space (founded by HfG Offenbach, located in Frankfurt Main) is looking for projects from the Department of Design at HfG Offenbach that engage with prosthetics, orthotics, assistive systems, adaptive tools, accessible interfaces, inclusive products, material experiments, or alternative technologies. It also welcomes work that critically examines ideals of functionality, efficiency, optimization, and repair, or that develops new ideas of embodiment, care, dependency, and collective accessibility.

The Open Call also welcomes work that does not directly address disability as its subject. What matters is that the work engages with questions of normalization, standardization, access, temporality, or the relationships between bodies and their environments. We welcome completed projects as well as prototypes, artistic positions, processes, research, and speculative designs.

The exhibition understands design as a cultural practice that does not merely reflect social ideas about bodies, but actively helps produce them. It aims to create a space in which design can become a means of critical inquiry and in which new ideas of accessibility, connectedness, and ways of living together can be explored.

Possible questions include:
. What kinds of bodies does design assume, and which bodies are consequently rendered invisible?
. How can prostheses or technologies be understood as extensions, translations, or autonomous forms of embodiment?
. What role can care and interdependence play in the design process?
. How does design change when accessibility is understood not as an afterthought or adaptation, but as a starting point?
. What alternative ideas of functionality or temporality can be imagined through design?

Who can apply?
The Open Call is exclusively open to students and graduates of the Department of Design at HfG Offenbach. Students must be enrolled in the Department of Design and have completed at least their 5th semester at the time of application. Graduates are eligible to apply if they completed their degree no more than two years ago.

Selection
Several positions will be selected for the exhibition. The selection will focus on works that offer different perspectives on the questions raised by the Open Call and that can enter into dialogue with one another. The aim is to provide a multifaceted insight into current design practices and critical approaches at HfG Offenbach.

What can be submitted?
You may submit completed projects as well as prototypes, material experiments, artistic positions, processes, research, or speculative designs. Works that are still in development and can be further developed before the exhibition are also welcome.

Accompanying programme
In addition to works for the exhibition, we also welcome ideas for an accompanying programme — including concepts for events, workshops, talks, screenings, or other formats that expand upon or deepen the themes of the exhibition.

Application
Please submit the following materials as a PDF:

Portfolio
A short concept statement (max. one page) explaining how the submitted work relates to the Open Call, or outlining how the work could be further developed in the context of the exhibition.

Email: f9@hfg-offenbach.de
Subject: Open Call Design
Deadline: 25 October 2026

The Open Call is an invitation to collectively consider which ideas of bodies are produced through design and how these ideas can be shifted. The exhibition aims to become a shared space for working and thinking, where different design positions can enter into dialogue and open up new perspectives on bodies, accessibility, and living together in society.

Exhibition

Opening: 15 January 2027
Duration: 16 January – 27 February 2027
Location: F9 – Exhibition Space of HfG Offenbach
Fahrgasse 9, 60311 Frankfurt