Johanna Seelemann is the new project professor in product design
Johanna Seelemann will take over the project professorship in the Product Design course (Kunsthochschule Kassel) in the winter semester 2025/26.
Born in Leipzig in 1990, Johanna Seelemann is a designer whose practice drifts between Germany and Iceland, tracing the stories hidden within the objects of everyday life. Educated in design in both Iceland and the Netherlands, she founded her studio in 2020.
Her work decodes the mundane — from the packaging and tools that accompany us daily to the systems of production and circulation that shape them. By following supply chains and exploring material languages, she opens up alternative readings of the prosaic, together ideas of substitution, adaptation, and resilience. The studio’s approach moves fluidly across product design, conceptual research, and strategy, often blending disciplines into thoughtful experiments that suggest how design might serve new values in a changing world.
Seelemann’s practice has reached an international audience, with exhibitions at institutions such as the Design Museum London, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and Villa Noailles in Hyères. Her work has been recognised with the Green Concept Award (2022), and in 2023 she was shortlisted as Emerging Designer of the Year by Dezeen Awards. Wallpaper* also named her among the creative leaders of the future, highlighting her role in expanding the ways design is practiced today.
As part of her project professorship, Johanna Seelemann will work with students on the topic "Designed by Refrigeration - Overcoming the Artificial Cryosphere", among others. Artificial refrigeration has profoundly changed our nutrition, infrastructure and way of life - from a technological specialty to a global standard. However, cooling is not a neutral process: it consumes large amounts of energy, causes emissions and influences our consumer behavior as well as our environment. The course "Designed by Refrigeration - Overcoming the Artificial Cryosphere" understands cooling as a cultural, technical and ecological phenomenon. In short projects, excursions and lectures, students will examine the global cold chain, question the existing dependence on artificial refrigeration and develop alternative, sustainable strategies for dealing with food.
Professor Johanna Seelemann's inaugural lecture will take place on October 13, 2025 at 12 noon in the Kunsthochschule lecture hall.
Press contact:
Çiğdem Özdemir
presse[at]kunsthochschulekassel.de
Links:
Information about Johanna Seelemann here.
Information on the project professorship here.