(Urban planning workshop; Coruña, Spain; 2009) The workshop “Beyond Fault” organized at the COAG as part of the summer courses of University of A Coruña intended to revisit the planning strategies of the city of A Coruña in Galicia, Northern Spain. Our objective, in collaboration with Juan Creus, was to generate a new zoning category that applies to areas with a high degree of time-richness (frictions between traces from different time periods, not necessarily with heritage value). After visiting several sites with different such conditions from diverse historical periods the team focused on the area of El Parrote where the city has gradually reclaimed land from the bay over the last 500 years.

(Creative initiatives workshop; Rosario, Argentina; 2009) DIY ESTUDIO was a week long international workshop curated by Desirée Vidal at the Centro Cultural Parque de España in Rosario, Argentina. It gathered 29 self-managed self-sustained creative projects from Latin America and Spain. kawamura-ganjavian, as founders of Studio Banana, were invited to coordinate one of the three work tables.

(Master course on new methods of design; Universidad Politécnica, Madrid, Spain; 2008) This master course, directed by Joaquina Fernández and Jon Elejabeitia, and coordinated by kawamura-ganjavian, explores alternative design approach methodologies. The course was structured through an iterative series of multidisciplinary workshops allowing each students to explore their own thesis topics in different formats and materialisations. The workshops were developed in close collaboration with members of the multidisciplinary platform Studio Banana.

(Experimental workshop, Madrid, Spain, 2007) 8 prefabricated cardboard houses; 8 children between 3 and 7 years; fabric, paint, plasticine, scissors, brushes…; a full morning of spatial expression. This esperimental workshop tries to awake the spatial curiosity of young children. Each participant is given a cardboard house which they can modify freely: new openings, internal furniture, external ornaments etc. At the end each child describes his/her feelings in the new mini-dwelling, the smells, its location, the neighbours…

(Master course in multidisciplinary design; Istituto Europeo di Design, Madrid, Spain; 2007-2009) kawamura-ganjavian have been design tutors in this experimental design course that draws together different creative visions with the participation of some of the best professionals from all around Europe. The students developed fresh design approaches within an open-ended creative process that lead to a rich repertoir of design solutions.

(4th and 5th year architecture course; Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio, Switzerland; 2007-2008) kawamura-ganjavian were assisting professor Martin Boesch in the atelier Riuso which focused on strategies for the adaptation of buildings to new uses. The project of the course was the intervention in a Renaissance patio villa in the hamlet of Brusata and it was developed in collaboration with the Swiss Federal bureau for historical heritage and the Restoration department of the Polytechnic school of Lugano.

(Landscape and territorial planning workshop; Pesoz, Asturias, Spain; 2007) The KWs festival is a territorial proposal developed during the landscape workshop PH02 in the beautiful but depopulated Navia river valley in Northern Spain, notorious for the large amount of electricity produced by its dams. It consists of an annual festival of light, illuminating landscape features, thus calling attention on its spectacular beauty and creating a new activity engine for an economically depressed region. kawamura-ganjavian were the tutors of a group of students and were invited by Grupo Aranea.

(Product design; Istituto Europeo di Design, Madrid, Spain; 2005-2006) Playroom was a course conceived as a space to experiment with everydayness, trying to give unprecedented answers to unresolved questions of our contemporary life styles. Playroom is a course aimed at developing a sensitivity towards contradiction, fagility and imperfection, using the tools of intelligence and innovation. Thus, the understanding of design, far from being a stylistic exercise, tries to find a balance between personal affinities and universal versatile needs.

(Urbanism and geography workshop; Kassel University, Kassel, Germany; 2004) This intense workshop, to which we were invited as tutors by professor Dagmar Reichert, was the opportunity of twisting reality to a group of geography students. Instead of reading and analysis reality, they had to invent fantasies through a cartographic game at many different scales (from the neighbourhood to the region) and formats (from the map to the interview).