Fall 2009
H Level course
9 Credits
Room E15-135 (the Media Lab Cube conference room), Wednesdays 1-4pm
Assignments: weekly readings, design projects, web documentation and a final project.
No Prerequisites
“The responsibility for the relationship between industry and culture falls, in the modern world, on the shoulders of design. The product is the mediator between manufacture and the consumer, and its design is the container of the message that is mediated.”- Penny Sparke from Design in Context. Quarto, London, 1987.
Objects are bound to the state of craft: the materials, processes and cultures of production. The skilled practice of making – craft – is shaped as much by technological advancements as by cultural perspective. Future Craft considers how the processes of design and production can be used to reflect new social values and to change dominant cultural practices, addressing design as both a process and a result of a process, influenced by technological developments, the socio-economic constraints of the manufacturing process, and the cultural context that gives rise to the need for objects.
In this third installment of the course, we will take a concentrated approach to sustainability in terms of global, local and personal issues. The objects we make are the channels that connect us with materials, cultures and individuals around the world. Production practices shape communities and politics. Individuals are defined by the objects they have at their disposal. At every level, designers have the power and the responsibility to define not only how to make things, but what things should be made.
This course will outline a future state of craft through a studio-based critical exploration of processes of contemporary craft and emerging themes in design. Each week we will explore the scope of influence of design through reading, discussion and hands-on prototyping of objects – products, furniture, and fashion – to create a discourse reflecting how methods for creation and production link directly to objects as artifacts of culture. Throughout the course we will strive to make new things by uncovering new ways of making. Global thinking will frame craft in terms of supply chain, sustainability, design for ddevelopment and open design processes. We will refer to product ethnography and cultural probes, investigating how our perception, interpretation and expectation of objects is also evolving.
The course will be a mixture of studio design work, both in and out of class, and lectures, readings, discussion and critique. Students will be introduced to a number of fabrication techniques, design processes and new materials, and expected to produce object-scale prototypes. Through a combination of producing objects and engaging in critical reflection, students will be encouraged to develop a design practice which innovates technically in process and materials as well situates their work in the context of contemporary culture and technology. Together with physical practice, students will document and share their projects through on-line social networks and develop virtual identities to engage in open design.
————————————————-
Schedule
————————————————-
Week 1: Introduction to the class
————————————————-
Week 2: Virtual Guilds
The virtualization of design processes has distanced designers from practices of making; at the same time new channels of communication are opening channels of communication between producers, consumers and entrepreneur-designers. In this class we will explore how the open and collective traditions of craft societies and the internet are shaping new communities on-line – so-called ‘virtual guilds.’ We will investigate how these communities are formed and sustained and how to participate in and initiate collective efforts.
Assignment: Product Autopsy
-Banham, R. Theory and Design in the First Machine Age. New York: Praeger, 1967. (select chapters).
-James-Chakraborty, K. Bauhaus Culture: From Weimar to the Cold War. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2006. (select chapters)
-Le Corbusier/Pierre Jeanneret. “Five Points towards a new architecture”. Originally published in Almanach de l’Architecture moderne, Paris 1926.
-Loos, Adolf. “Ornament and Crime”, Ariadne Press, 1997. (original publication 1908).
————————————————-
Week 3: Product Ethnography & Cultural Probes
Product Design often preaches the value of ‘need’ based design, positioning products as answers to desires designated by the end user, with the assumption that user observation becomes an integral part of the the process of design. While this remains useful in its convention, new emerging trends such as ‘critical design’ and ‘cultural probes’ are demonstrating that there is a category of products which can be designed and put to use to bring to light previously undemonstrated needs and desires. As tools for ethnographic investigation, these ideas raise issues about how designers determine ‘need’ and how and what products should be produced, something that becomes particularly problematic when exploring technological devices whose functionality demands no specific form, the ‘blacked box’ product. This week explores how designers can use the methods of ethnography as appropriated for their discipline, both as a tool in the design process and to reflect back on objects made.
-Gaver, W, Dunne, A., Pacenti, E. “Design: Cultural Probes”. Interactions, ACM Press, 1999.
-Boehner, K., Vertesi, J., Sengers, P., and Dourish, P. 2007. “How HCI Interprets the Probes.” Proc. ACM Conf. Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI 2007.
-Dourish, P. Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction. Bradford Books, 2004. (selected chapters)
-Llunblad, S. & Holmquist, L. E. “Transfer scenarios: grounding innovation with marginal practices” Proceedings of CHI 2007, (p.737 – 746) ACM Press, 2007.
-Dunne, Anthony. Hertzian Tales: Electronic Products, Aesthetic Experience, and Critical Design. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2006. (select chapters)
————————————————-
Week 4: Bigger, Slower, Cheaper
Moore’s self-fulfilling law, intellectual property and market dynamics have engendered a product design culture which is continuously seeking to make smaller, more powerful and more expensive electronics. At the same time, design for development, green design and open-source favor inexpensive, easily interchanged and transparent product design. This course considers how much technology is necessary and how to substitute complex processes and materials with simpler ones while promoting brand and product identity. ‘Slow’ movements are discussed to identify the desirable aspects of de-technologizing as part of making and living.
Assignment: De-technologize an existing object and improve it.
-Illich, I. Tools for Conviviality, Fontana 1979.
-Petrini and Padovani, Slow Food Revolution, Rizzoli 2006.
-Fuad-Luke, A. ‘Slow design’ – a paradigm shift in design philosophy?’ Bangalore, Design by Development 2002.
————————————————-
Week 5: Open Design
Software and Hardware are often developed according to open-source models, where the basic know-how necessary to participate is standardized and freely distributed. Several attempts have sought to democratize the development of physical objects as well. Open-source industrial design can facilitate brainstorming, manufacturing design and marketing among other things. On the other hand, there are numerous skills involved in the design of most objects, often requiring the involvement of multiple experts. How can the basic knowledge for physical design be as widespread as open-source software? What aspects of design can be dislocated from proprietary research and development? How important are secrecy and surprise to the success of a design? This course will consider the benefits and limitations of open-source models applied to the design of physical products, culminating in a critical participation in current physical open-source models. We will also feature a brief overview on blogging, youtubing, flickring and other open-source strategies useful for the rest of the term.
-Raymond, E. The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary. O’Reilly Media, Inc. 2001. (selected chapters)
-Gershenfeld, Neil. FAB: the Coming Revolution on your Desktop – From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication. New York: Basic Books, 2005. (selected chapters)
-Goetz, Thomas. “Open-Source Everywhere.” Wired Magazine, 2003.
-Sabella, J. “Craftivism: Is Crafting the New Activism?” Columbia Chronicle Online Edition, Summer 2006.
————————————————-
Week 6: Life Cycle Design
Global supply chains have favored products with a one-way ‘cradle-to-grave’ life cycle. At the same time, many modern objects could not exist without globally integrated supply chains that bring together markets, manufacturing and materials from around the Earth. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) considers direct and indirect effects of a single object’s manufacture, use and disposal in an effort to optimize supply chains and reduce environmental impact. LCA considers the environmental costs associated with the extraction of raw materials, the production of objects, their use and ultimate disposal with an aim to reduce resource flows through re-use, re-manufacturing and re-cycling. The ‘buy local’ movement is presented as a marketing-based alternative and to inform other ways of designing around global life cycle.
Assignment: Design an object and its life cycle.
-Giudice, F., LaRosa, G., Risitano, A. Product Design for the Environment: a Life Cycle Approach. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2006.
-Hertwich. “Consumption and Industrial Ecology” Vol. 9, 1-2 – Special Issue on Consumption and Industrial Ecology – Winter-Spring 2005
————————————————-
Week 7: Design for the Environment
‘Green’ design describes anything from recycled materials to organic processes and a woodsy aesthetic – without significantly reducing demand on environmental resources. ‘Cradle-to-grave’ lifecycles can be extended by ‘recycling,’ but current methods almost always result in the ultimate destruction or disposal of materials. By carefully considering the alternatives to current disposable, single-use products it may be possible for materials to gain value over time, to be ‘up-cycled.’ Equipped with an understanding of life-cycle analysis, the goal of this course will be to brainstorm alternatives to consumption-based objects.
Guest Speaker: Grant Kristofek
Assignment: Create an up-cyclable object/up-cycle an object
-McDonough, W. and Braugart, M. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way we Make Things. New York: North Point Press, 2002.
-Roger, Heather. Gone Tomorrow: the Hidden Life of Garbage. New Press, 2006.
-Pawley, Martin: “WOBO: a new kind of message in a bottle”, chapter in Pawley, Martin. Garbage Housing, Krieger Pub. Co., 1975.
————————————————-
Week 8: Material Inventions / Bamboo workshop
The tools and materials that designers have access to determine to a large extent the type of invention that can take place. We will consider the often one-sided relationship between materials and design and explore new forms of innovation possible through the creation and adoption of radically new (or old) materials. As part of this session, we will have an in-class material workshop exploring the possibilities of renewable materials in everyday design.
-Ashby & Johnson, C. Materials and Design: The Art and Science of Material Selection in Product Design. Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford, 2002. (selected chapters)
-Brownell, B. “Transmaterial”. Princeton Architectural Press, New-York (2006).
-Fenichell, Stephen. Plastic: the Making of a Synthetic Century. HarperCollins 1996. (selected passages)
-Fuad-Luke, Alastair. The Eco-Design Sourcebook. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2004.
————————————————-
Week 9:Form, Function and the new Body
Human-centered design has emerged as one of the tenets of contemporary design, and studies in ergonomics have taught designers to revere the form and abilities of the body as the standard for analysis in interaction. Yet our notion of the body is changing. New technologies are allowing our bodies to become enhanced, augmented, expanded in functionality and altered in form, while ubiquitous & embedded technologies in nanoscale proportions are allowing our devices to become more and more a part of us with increasing mobility and pervasiveness. In addition to this convergence, new tools for creation are allowing designers to explore biomimickry in their design process in more transformative and temporal ways. This week explores how our changing concept of the body alters how we strive to design for ourselves and how this changes the nature of universal design.
-Skin, Surface, Substance. Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, Princeton Architectural Press, 2002. (selected passages: Lupton, Ellen: Skin: New Design Organics; Tobias, Jennifer: Artificial Skin: Ingrown and Outsourced; Intelligence + Touch)
-Crantz, Galen. The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body, and Design. W. W. Norton & Company; January 2000.
-Holt, Steven & Skov, Maria. Blobjects and Beyond: The New Fluidity in Design, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 2005. (selected chapter: From the Human Form Flows Fluidity)
————————————————-
Week 10: Mass Craft/Shoe Workshop
Much of the unseen craft in contemporary manufacturing and fabrication processes derives from the techniques developed to produce goods in multiples and for the masses. Innovation in these processes can be a result of cross-pollination between disciplines, taking inspiration from the methods and materials of one industry and applying it to another. At the same time, the desire remains to have products emerge that are unique and customized to each individual’s taste remains, the aim for the truly ‘crafted’ object. This week probes new approaches to this quest, ones that have found solutions by borrowing ideas from diverse fields and holistically rethinking systems of production in light of advancements in digital design tools and technologies.
Guest Speaker: Sergio Dulio
-Hodge, Brooke, ed. Skin & Bones, Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture, Thames and Hudson, New York, 2006. (selected essays)
-Testa, Peter. Carbon fiber prototype tower. http://www.peter-testa.com/
-Issey Miyake & Dai Fujiwara: A-POC Making, Vitra Design Museum Catalog, 2004.
-Hippel, Eric von. “Toolkits for user innovation : the design side of mass customization”. Cambridge, Sloan School of Management, MIT, 1999].
————————————————-
Week 11: Vision-Based Design and Systems Thinking
Standing in stark contrast to needs-based and human factors-inspired design, the MIT Medialab has a history of vision-based innovation, where system-wide rethinking makes possible a sustained stream of invention. In this session we will investigate the role of a designer as visionary and the role of design innovation in shaping policy and culture.
Guest Speaker: Michael Lin
-Bush, Vannevar. As We May Think. The Atlantic Monthly, July 1945.
-Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture. New York: NYU Press, 2008.
-Negroponte, Nicholas. Being Digital. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996.
-Feenberg, Andrew. Questioning Technology. London: Routledge, 1999.
-Mitchell, William J. Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004.
————————————————-
Week 12+13: Discussion and Progress Review of Final Project
Propose and prepare the presentation of a project that takes craft into account as part of the business model, product, social impact, or some other facet of the product design scope. Prototypes, print/web/video marketing, business plans, and publications are acceptable.
Syllabus
MAS.963 Future Craft: Radical Sustainability in Product Design
Leonardo Bonanni, Amanda Parkes, Hiroshi Ishii
contact: futurecraft@media.mit.edu
Fall 2009
H Level course
9 Credits
Room E15-135 (the Media Lab Cube conference room), Wednesdays 1-4pm
Assignments: weekly readings, design projects, web documentation and a final project.
No Prerequisites
“The responsibility for the relationship between industry and culture falls, in the modern world, on the shoulders of design. The product is the mediator between manufacture and the consumer, and its design is the container of the message that is mediated.”- Penny Sparke from Design in Context. Quarto, London, 1987.
Objects are bound to the state of craft: the materials, processes and cultures of production. The skilled practice of making – craft – is shaped as much by technological advancements as by cultural perspective. Future Craft considers how the processes of design and production can be used to reflect new social values and to change dominant cultural practices, addressing design as both a process and a result of a process, influenced by technological developments, the socio-economic constraints of the manufacturing process, and the cultural context that gives rise to the need for objects.
In this third installment of the course, we will take a concentrated approach to sustainability in terms of global, local and personal issues. The objects we make are the channels that connect us with materials, cultures and individuals around the world. Production practices shape communities and politics. Individuals are defined by the objects they have at their disposal. At every level, designers have the power and the responsibility to define not only how to make things, but what things should be made.
This course will outline a future state of craft through a studio-based critical exploration of processes of contemporary craft and emerging themes in design. Each week we will explore the scope of influence of design through reading, discussion and hands-on prototyping of objects – products, furniture, and fashion – to create a discourse reflecting how methods for creation and production link directly to objects as artifacts of culture. Throughout the course we will strive to make new things by uncovering new ways of making. Global thinking will frame craft in terms of supply chain, sustainability, design for ddevelopment and open design processes. We will refer to product ethnography and cultural probes, investigating how our perception, interpretation and expectation of objects is also evolving.
The course will be a mixture of studio design work, both in and out of class, and lectures, readings, discussion and critique. Students will be introduced to a number of fabrication techniques, design processes and new materials, and expected to produce object-scale prototypes. Through a combination of producing objects and engaging in critical reflection, students will be encouraged to develop a design practice which innovates technically in process and materials as well situates their work in the context of contemporary culture and technology. Together with physical practice, students will document and share their projects through on-line social networks and develop virtual identities to engage in open design.
————————————————-
Schedule
————————————————-
Week 1: Introduction to the class
————————————————-
Week 2: Virtual Guilds
The virtualization of design processes has distanced designers from practices of making; at the same time new channels of communication are opening channels of communication between producers, consumers and entrepreneur-designers. In this class we will explore how the open and collective traditions of craft societies and the internet are shaping new communities on-line – so-called ‘virtual guilds.’ We will investigate how these communities are formed and sustained and how to participate in and initiate collective efforts.
Assignment: Product Autopsy
-Banham, R. Theory and Design in the First Machine Age. New York: Praeger, 1967. (select chapters).
-James-Chakraborty, K. Bauhaus Culture: From Weimar to the Cold War. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2006. (select chapters)
-Le Corbusier/Pierre Jeanneret. “Five Points towards a new architecture”. Originally published in Almanach de l’Architecture moderne, Paris 1926.
-Loos, Adolf. “Ornament and Crime”, Ariadne Press, 1997. (original publication 1908).
————————————————-
Week 3: Product Ethnography & Cultural Probes
Product Design often preaches the value of ‘need’ based design, positioning products as answers to desires designated by the end user, with the assumption that user observation becomes an integral part of the the process of design. While this remains useful in its convention, new emerging trends such as ‘critical design’ and ‘cultural probes’ are demonstrating that there is a category of products which can be designed and put to use to bring to light previously undemonstrated needs and desires. As tools for ethnographic investigation, these ideas raise issues about how designers determine ‘need’ and how and what products should be produced, something that becomes particularly problematic when exploring technological devices whose functionality demands no specific form, the ‘blacked box’ product. This week explores how designers can use the methods of ethnography as appropriated for their discipline, both as a tool in the design process and to reflect back on objects made.
-Gaver, W, Dunne, A., Pacenti, E. “Design: Cultural Probes”. Interactions, ACM Press, 1999.
-Boehner, K., Vertesi, J., Sengers, P., and Dourish, P. 2007. “How HCI Interprets the Probes.” Proc. ACM Conf. Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI 2007.
-Dourish, P. Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction. Bradford Books, 2004. (selected chapters)
-Llunblad, S. & Holmquist, L. E. “Transfer scenarios: grounding innovation with marginal practices” Proceedings of CHI 2007, (p.737 – 746) ACM Press, 2007.
-Dunne, Anthony. Hertzian Tales: Electronic Products, Aesthetic Experience, and Critical Design. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2006. (select chapters)
————————————————-
Week 4: Bigger, Slower, Cheaper
Moore’s self-fulfilling law, intellectual property and market dynamics have engendered a product design culture which is continuously seeking to make smaller, more powerful and more expensive electronics. At the same time, design for development, green design and open-source favor inexpensive, easily interchanged and transparent product design. This course considers how much technology is necessary and how to substitute complex processes and materials with simpler ones while promoting brand and product identity. ‘Slow’ movements are discussed to identify the desirable aspects of de-technologizing as part of making and living.
Guest Speaker: Rich Fletcher, Tagsense Inc.
Assignment: De-technologize an existing object and improve it.
-Illich, I. Tools for Conviviality, Fontana 1979.
-Petrini and Padovani, Slow Food Revolution, Rizzoli 2006.
-Fuad-Luke, A. ‘Slow design’ – a paradigm shift in design philosophy?’ Bangalore, Design by Development 2002.
————————————————-
Week 5: Open Design
Software and Hardware are often developed according to open-source models, where the basic know-how necessary to participate is standardized and freely distributed. Several attempts have sought to democratize the development of physical objects as well. Open-source industrial design can facilitate brainstorming, manufacturing design and marketing among other things. On the other hand, there are numerous skills involved in the design of most objects, often requiring the involvement of multiple experts. How can the basic knowledge for physical design be as widespread as open-source software? What aspects of design can be dislocated from proprietary research and development? How important are secrecy and surprise to the success of a design? This course will consider the benefits and limitations of open-source models applied to the design of physical products, culminating in a critical participation in current physical open-source models. We will also feature a brief overview on blogging, youtubing, flickring and other open-source strategies useful for the rest of the term.
Guest Speaker: Mako Hill, Ubuntu
Assignment: Webify a design
-Raymond, E. The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary. O’Reilly Media, Inc. 2001. (selected chapters)
-Gershenfeld, Neil. FAB: the Coming Revolution on your Desktop – From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication. New York: Basic Books, 2005. (selected chapters)
-Goetz, Thomas. “Open-Source Everywhere.” Wired Magazine, 2003.
-Sabella, J. “Craftivism: Is Crafting the New Activism?” Columbia Chronicle Online Edition, Summer 2006.
————————————————-
Week 6: Life Cycle Design
Global supply chains have favored products with a one-way ‘cradle-to-grave’ life cycle. At the same time, many modern objects could not exist without globally integrated supply chains that bring together markets, manufacturing and materials from around the Earth. Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) considers direct and indirect effects of a single object’s manufacture, use and disposal in an effort to optimize supply chains and reduce environmental impact. LCA considers the environmental costs associated with the extraction of raw materials, the production of objects, their use and ultimate disposal with an aim to reduce resource flows through re-use, re-manufacturing and re-cycling. The ‘buy local’ movement is presented as a marketing-based alternative and to inform other ways of designing around global life cycle.
Assignment: Design an object and its life cycle.
-Giudice, F., LaRosa, G., Risitano, A. Product Design for the Environment: a Life Cycle Approach. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2006.
-Hertwich. “Consumption and Industrial Ecology” Vol. 9, 1-2 – Special Issue on Consumption and Industrial Ecology – Winter-Spring 2005
————————————————-
Week 7: Design for the Environment
‘Green’ design describes anything from recycled materials to organic processes and a woodsy aesthetic – without significantly reducing demand on environmental resources. ‘Cradle-to-grave’ lifecycles can be extended by ‘recycling,’ but current methods almost always result in the ultimate destruction or disposal of materials. By carefully considering the alternatives to current disposable, single-use products it may be possible for materials to gain value over time, to be ‘up-cycled.’ Equipped with an understanding of life-cycle analysis, the goal of this course will be to brainstorm alternatives to consumption-based objects.
Guest Speaker: Grant Kristofek
Assignment: Create an up-cyclable object/up-cycle an object
-McDonough, W. and Braugart, M. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way we Make Things. New York: North Point Press, 2002.
-Roger, Heather. Gone Tomorrow: the Hidden Life of Garbage. New Press, 2006.
-Pawley, Martin: “WOBO: a new kind of message in a bottle”, chapter in Pawley, Martin. Garbage Housing, Krieger Pub. Co., 1975.
————————————————-
Week 8: Material Inventions / Bamboo workshop
The tools and materials that designers have access to determine to a large extent the type of invention that can take place. We will consider the often one-sided relationship between materials and design and explore new forms of innovation possible through the creation and adoption of radically new (or old) materials. As part of this session, we will have an in-class material workshop exploring the possibilities of renewable materials in everyday design.
-Ashby & Johnson, C. Materials and Design: The Art and Science of Material Selection in Product Design. Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford, 2002. (selected chapters)
-Brownell, B. “Transmaterial”. Princeton Architectural Press, New-York (2006).
-Fenichell, Stephen. Plastic: the Making of a Synthetic Century. HarperCollins 1996. (selected passages)
-Fuad-Luke, Alastair. The Eco-Design Sourcebook. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2004.
————————————————-
Week 9:Form, Function and the new Body
Human-centered design has emerged as one of the tenets of contemporary design, and studies in ergonomics have taught designers to revere the form and abilities of the body as the standard for analysis in interaction. Yet our notion of the body is changing. New technologies are allowing our bodies to become enhanced, augmented, expanded in functionality and altered in form, while ubiquitous & embedded technologies in nanoscale proportions are allowing our devices to become more and more a part of us with increasing mobility and pervasiveness. In addition to this convergence, new tools for creation are allowing designers to explore biomimickry in their design process in more transformative and temporal ways. This week explores how our changing concept of the body alters how we strive to design for ourselves and how this changes the nature of universal design.
-Skin, Surface, Substance. Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, Princeton Architectural Press, 2002. (selected passages: Lupton, Ellen: Skin: New Design Organics; Tobias, Jennifer: Artificial Skin: Ingrown and Outsourced; Intelligence + Touch)
-Crantz, Galen. The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body, and Design. W. W. Norton & Company; January 2000.
-Holt, Steven & Skov, Maria. Blobjects and Beyond: The New Fluidity in Design, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 2005. (selected chapter: From the Human Form Flows Fluidity)
————————————————-
Week 10: Mass Craft/Shoe Workshop
Much of the unseen craft in contemporary manufacturing and fabrication processes derives from the techniques developed to produce goods in multiples and for the masses. Innovation in these processes can be a result of cross-pollination between disciplines, taking inspiration from the methods and materials of one industry and applying it to another. At the same time, the desire remains to have products emerge that are unique and customized to each individual’s taste remains, the aim for the truly ‘crafted’ object. This week probes new approaches to this quest, ones that have found solutions by borrowing ideas from diverse fields and holistically rethinking systems of production in light of advancements in digital design tools and technologies.
Guest Speaker: Sergio Dulio
-Hodge, Brooke, ed. Skin & Bones, Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture, Thames and Hudson, New York, 2006. (selected essays)
-Testa, Peter. Carbon fiber prototype tower. http://www.peter-testa.com/
-Issey Miyake & Dai Fujiwara: A-POC Making, Vitra Design Museum Catalog, 2004.
-Hippel, Eric von. “Toolkits for user innovation : the design side of mass customization”. Cambridge, Sloan School of Management, MIT, 1999].
————————————————-
Week 11: Vision-Based Design and Systems Thinking
Standing in stark contrast to needs-based and human factors-inspired design, the MIT Medialab has a history of vision-based innovation, where system-wide rethinking makes possible a sustained stream of invention. In this session we will investigate the role of a designer as visionary and the role of design innovation in shaping policy and culture.
Guest Speaker: Michael Lin
-Bush, Vannevar. As We May Think. The Atlantic Monthly, July 1945.
-Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture. New York: NYU Press, 2008.
-Negroponte, Nicholas. Being Digital. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996.
-Feenberg, Andrew. Questioning Technology. London: Routledge, 1999.
-Mitchell, William J. Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004.
————————————————-
Week 12+13: Discussion and Progress Review of Final Project
Propose and prepare the presentation of a project that takes craft into account as part of the business model, product, social impact, or some other facet of the product design scope. Prototypes, print/web/video marketing, business plans, and publications are acceptable.
Week 14: Final Project Presentation