Students taking action for the planet

Date: 2023.03.13
Starting from this semester, students can also take an accredited Permaculture Design Course (PDC). The full-house public launch event took place on 4 March in the MOME Auditorium, introducing permaculture as a design system and approach that simulates ecological processes in nature and draws on the synergies between landscape, man and natural resources.

After the fashion of natural ecological systems, permaculture design follows a no waste and closed-cycle or circular principle. It uses a holistic approach as well as strategies and solutions that can be readily employed in rural and urban settings, at a scale both small and large, for organising our individual lives, rebuilding natural systems, building communities, or even in recreating social systems.

The newly launched programme is taught by accredited PDC teacher Márkuly István, who studied permaculture in Ireland, along with MOME product design alumnus and head of Co&Co Designcommunication Kft. Richárd Nagy and teacher and doctoral student Máté Gorka-Focht. It is loosely based on A Designer’s Manual by Bill Mollison, and the syllabus will cover the philosophy of permaculture, the basics of ecology, pedology, and water management, as well as methodological aspects of site analysis and evaluation, aerial survey, and perennial food systems.


 

Exploration of the theoretical background will be followed by practical lessons held on the MOME Campus, involving the presentation of assignments developed in groups relying on the knowledge accumulated throughout the semester. This five-credit course, organised in collaboration with the Életfa Permakultúra Egyesület, provides vocational qualifications registered in the National Qualifications Register, and complete with a summer camp, an international permaculture certificate.

Its contents are also aligned with the green commitments of the University: The sustainability-focused MOME Zero programme aims to help MOME become the first university in Hungary to achieve complete net carbon neutrality by 2030, and also includes MOME’s forest planting project launched this year in collaboration with three national parks and the involvement of students. 

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This year’s winner of the Elizabeth A-i-R international photography residency programme has been selected, and will be enjoying the hospitality of Erzsébetváros and MOME. Mexican photographer Alejandra Gonzales Aragon works with various mediums, chiefly video, sound, photos, and found pictures, and is also interested in performative exercises. Her main focuses include gender issues, as well as intersections of home and identity. Launched jointly by Budapest Erzsébetváros and MOME Photography in 2022, the programme this year received nearly 60 entries from 60 countries over 5 continents.

Winning projects include a hearing aid doubling as jewellery, a narrative video game, multimedia visuals, and several revitalisation projects. The certificates were presented personally by the eponym of the scholarship, world-renowned product designer and MOME Professor Emeritus Stefan Lengyel at the awards ceremony, which was a great honour to both the scholarship recipients and the university staff. The sixteen students will receive the scholarship for a period of 5 months to work on further elaborating their concepts.
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