EUT 361E - Contemporary Issues in Design

Course Objectives

1. To inform students about critical perspectives in design practice by presenting project examples within a related theoretical framework.
2. To inform students about the theories for critical investigations of cultural production in the 20th century.
3. To indicate links between the above mentioned theories and project examples by weekly annotated readings.

Course Description

Introduction to critical theory; Walter Benjamin and the consequences of mass production on cultural artefacts and their environment; Design and modernist ideology; Design and post-modern ideology, Expanding approaches in design after post-modernism; Design for social innovation with project examples; Participation in design with project examples; Everyday practices as design with project examples; Interrogative Design with project examples; Simulation and simulacra and its impact on design; The cyborg manifesto and its impact on design; Urban mobile shelters with project examples; Psychoanalysis and designed objects with project examples; Critical Design with project examples, discussion for the future.