Patternhouse

Martina Drechsel (she/her) lives and works in Bolzano and Munich. She grew up in Bolzano before studying fashion at the Academy of Costume and Fashion in Rome and then visual communication at E.S.A.G. Penninghen in Paris. After her diploma thesis with Roman Ciesclewicz, she joined the French graphic design collective Grapus for a year. From 1989 to 1992 she worked as a freelance artist in Berlin and then moved to Munich to design the cover of the newly founded news magazine Focus (Burdaverlag) for four years. This was followed by a four-year contract professorship in visual communication at the Faculty of Design at the Free University of Bolzano and the founding of two start-ups in the field of storytelling and foreign languages. From 2008 on, she has exhibited her drawings. Since 2016 she has been giving courses in Visual Thinking. In 2018 she founded Patternhouse, a research-based design project that supports the rehabilitation of people with mental illnesses.

Verena Perwanger (she/her) was born in Bolzano in 1961. She studied medicine at the University of Innsbruck and completed her specialist training in psychiatry at the University of Verona and the Maudsley Hospital in London. She is trained in systemic therapy and supervision. From 1991 she worked at the South Tyrolean Sanitary Service, and since 1998 at the Psychiatric Service of the Merano Health District. From 2003 to 2014 she was head of the psychiatric rehabilitation centre “Haus Basaglia”, and since 2014 she has been the primary physician of the Merano Psychiatric Service. Main areas of interest: psychiatric rehabilitation and de-escalation management.