Andrea Botero Cabrera

My design works explore technologies, services, media formats and genres for collectives and communities. Through my research I aim to understand how collectives come to understand the design spaces available to them and how designers could support more various infrastructuring processes around them. Broadly, my work engages with the possibilities, and contradictions of participating in the creation of environments, tools and media that afford more relational and caring interactions among, and between people and their environment. This I have done multiple domains ranging from everyday life to scientific endeavors.

I am affiliated with the INUSE research group. Between fall 2019 and spring 2024 I will be working on a new project exploring distributed, collaborative and experimental arrangements for innovation and design otherwise (Studio|Lab|Forest), with generous funding from the Academy of Finland. In addition to that I am involved in setting up the Creatures project, and ambitious H2020 project exploring the role of creative practices in sustainability transformations

Teaching:

I am not teaching at the moment, but I certainly enjoy this and have been doing it quite a lot in the past. The last course I was in charge was: MUO-E3033 - Strategic Co-Design L, (29.10.2019-04.12.2019) at the Design Department. I do advice MA and DA students on a continous basis.

BACKGROUND

As a design practitioner I have worked in several design consultancies and in multiple R&D projects as user interfase and interaction designer. I do occasional consultancy and service design gigs, mostly through Suo&Co, a collective design research studio I convene with 3 other wonderful friends.

I have a BA in Industrial Design from Universidad Nacional de Colombia (COL) and an MA in Product and Strategic Design from Aalto ARTS, formerly TAIK (FIN). I obtained my Doctor of Arts degree in New Media also from Aalto ARTS. Before returning to Aalto I worked at the department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at the University of Oulu (FIN).

I am also affiliate professor (dosenti) at the Faculty of of Architecture and Design of Universidad de los Andes, in Bogotá (COL), I collaborate with Fundación Karisma, a Colombian NGO seeking to respond to human rights issues in the context of ‘technology for development’. In my spare time I do design and multigenerational diversity activism through Ninho ry, a Finnish NGO creating a more diverse and plurilingual children's culture in Finland.