Departure

[Image: From Deep Unlearning (I), Sascha Pohflepp].

I woke up to the sad news this weekend that my friend, designer Sascha Pohflepp, has died. Sascha’s work was animated by such a good-natured inquisitiveness and sense of intellectual freedom, a grinning need to ask more questions about the objects, systems, and things before him—what they could be, what they should be, what they would be with the right amount of effort—that you could actually see it in his bearing, his near-constant smile, and a kind of amused sense that he didn’t quite believe what you were saying.

Sascha described his work as exploring “questions regarding the role of technology as a force that shapes our relationship with natural systems, human culture and ultimately ourselves, embodied in the tools we create.” His work required friends, others, collaborators; in Sascha’s words, “Almost every piece is grounded in joint efforts with researchers from the respective scientific fields and more often than not with peers as long-time collaborators. This emerges from a personal conviction that a truly satisfying understanding of the world and our role in it will not be achieved by a single perspective alone.”

Details are thin, but he seems to have died in his sleep in Berlin; he was 41.

2 thoughts on “Departure”

  1. New to your bldg blog and am rather enjoying all the content. Sorry to hear about the loss of your friend. He was too young. Hopefully you find solace and peace in the times you shared together.

  2. Very sad to hear. I did not know Sascha well but he made space to welcome me when I moved to Los Angeles and I am so thankful to have crossed paths.

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