The European Project Semester (EPS) is a four-month course for students in their final years of Design, Engineering, Technology and Economics designed to work in international and interdisciplinary teams. It is a program offered by 10 European universities in 9 countries. It is designed to prepare students with the necessary skills to face the challenges of the global economy. The international teams work in interdisciplinary projects usually with companies and industries selected to fit the students’ specializations and skills as well as to develop their teamwork and intercultural communication skills. The EPS program has been offered since 2005 at the ETSIADI School of Aerospace Engineering and Industrial Design of the Universitat Politècnica de València.
At the Valencia Furniture Fair, the works of the students of the 2024-2025 course were shown in the context of the pavilion for young designers and Design Schools Feria Hábitat Nude 2025. For the second time, the results of the “Children’s Furniture” project, developed by two different groups and with results materialized in full-scale prototypes and tested with children, were presented. As a challenge of this project approach, it is proposed to conceptualize a line of products based on the same philosophy. Thus, the project begins with a phase of market research on the existing offer in the category of children’s furniture to detect new needs. We also analyzed user profiles and design trends. It is significant that, in recent years, there has been a need detected by the different working groups to extend the life of the products or give them a second life in order to avoid removing them from use as soon as the child has grown up, or to generate play scenarios with different pieces. It is another way of providing sustainable solutions from the new generations of designers.
We present the results of the last courses with three product lines carried out by international teams. The first projectNUNAwas carried out by the group formed by Anthon Van Dyck, Bo Schreurs, Clara Bergjohann, Nepomuk Susani, Ola Mikołajczyk and Tilda Johansson, who created a multipurpose product proposal: a sofa crib convertible into a children’s table. The second project calledFlexiFurnwas carried out by the group formed by Iiro Korhonen, Hester Hoekstra, Lea Schmidt, Leda Patat, Linde de Haan and Valentin Trimmel.
A third project called NewFar was realized by the group formed by Raphael Lorenzi, Franziska Strauss, Nils Rutjes, Elisa Attrait, Anna Maria Pieper and Wiktoria Tuminska and presents a removable activity and rest center for homes and nurseries. All proposals were tested by children with the collaboration of the team of the Early Childhood Education Center of the Universitat Politècnica de València with interesting contributions and comments on the prototypes.
The stand presented at Nude 2025 was designed and produced entirely by this year’s EPS group, who are not the authors of the projects of their colleagues from previous years, but who take on the challenge of presenting those projects at the Valencia Furniture Fair as a practical exercise in product communication.
Project tutored by professors Gabriel Songel and Pedro Fuentes, sponsored by ETSIADI and the IDC Chair in Innovation, Design and Interculturality.
With the collaboration of PlaybyPlay.
