My practice moves between design and research, looking at how design operates as a political practice that both shapes and reflects its sociopolitical context. With a focus on graphic design and programming, I work across different analogue and digital media, considering the logics that programming brings to the design process.

I'm currently a PhD candidate at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, a joint program of Leiden University and the Royal Academ of Art, The Hague. The research explores programming as a design practice, using craft as a lens to counter paradigms of perfection, speed, and efficiency.

Alongside my research, I work as a freelance graphic designer and lecture on Critical Coding at the Faculty of Design at HAW Hamburg. I'm part of Gewer(r)be collective, where we join interest and expertises in a joint practice between design, art and research.

Last updated: Fri 25 September 2026

This research project is embedded in a four-year trajectory at PhDArts, the doctoral programme in art and design of the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (Leiden University) and the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague.

The research addresses a shift in graphic design towards a more procedural paradigm. The focus shifts from composing individual layouts to defining systems from which a variety of compositions can emerge. As programming follows this very logic (of defining rules from which form emerges), it is increasingly becoming part of the design process. However, there is still little conceptual understanding of what programming as a design practice actually is.

Taking up on that, this research project explores programming as a design practice, asking what a mindful approach would look like. Focusing on standardisation and automation, it examines the logics that programming introduces to the design process, and considers what happens when the gesture, with its embodied and situated trace, is replaced by a rule.

Methodologically, the research uses craft as a lens, where the practitioner, the material, and the tool stand in constant dialogue, with the tool historically allowing for modification. Contrary to the common design process, form emerges through the process rather than from a predetermined plan. When this triangle is applied to programming, code itself becomes material, raising the following questions:

(1) If we understand code as material, what properties and constraints does it have, and how do they determine the form?
(2) What follows for our tools if we begin reclaiming them as instruments we shape, rather than submitting to the logics they impose?
(3) What kinds of practices does this require or bring about?

The central objective is to build a bridge between programming and design, developing coding into a reflexive practice, aware of its own entanglements and constraints. Exploring how physicality and friction can influence design, the research works against paradigms of perfection, speed, and efficiency.

The research project is grounded in my design practice, where I work between graphic design and programming, across analogue and digital media.

Last updated: Sat 12 September 2026

Bunk, C. 2026. Coding otherwise: An embodied approach to coding as a design practice. In A. Haarmann and E. Bippus, eds. Kunsten/Arting: Reihe Praktische Kunstphilosophie, 130–137. Bielefeld: transcript. ↘

The text develops coding as an embodied, situated design practice. Bringing programming into dialogue with knitting, it examines how rule-based systems enable creativity while suppressing friction, difference and vulnerability. Through collaborative coding and the passing-on of code, it proposes an intersubjective approach that keeps bodies, partial knowledges and multiple ways of working within the computational loop.

Last updated: Tue 15 September 2026