89121 Sustainability, Design and Creative Futures: Spatio-Temporal Shifts

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Handbook description

Different cultures inhabit space and time in very different ways. The inherited spatio-temporal dispositions that shape our world dispose us to particular pleasures; attune us to particular kinds of beauty; make possible particular modes of knowing and particular kinds of production. The spatio-temporal not only configures everyday practices, cares and striving, but significantly impacts the wider ecologies in which we participate. Unsustainable modes of inhabiting our world are currently held in place by the spatio-temporal dispositions that dominate contemporary globalised cultures.

This studio looks at the role played by different design disciplines in the production and reproduction of particular modes of spatio-temporal experience, whether the disciplinary focus is the body, equipment, communication, interaction, environment, systems or services. The power of design to shift the ways we inhabit time and space, and the implications of such shifts for sustainability, are explored through studio projects.

Subject objectives/outcomes

Participants who actively participate in and successfully complete all aspects of this subject will have:

1. Demonstrated understanding of the challenges involved in, and the value of, designing for environmental sustainment.
2. Demonstrated a capacity to think globally, and to ethically engage with questions of justice that impact global communities.
3. Appreciated the relationship between flexible thinking, creativity and change.
4. Demonstrated a capacity for flexible thinking in relation to iterative and creative design concept development.
5. Demonstrated an ability to effectively communicate, actively share, and dialogically develop design ideas.
6. Demonstrated self-sufficiency and time management skills in undertaking research for, and development of, design propositions.
7. Understood the relationships between culturally inflected, spatio-temporal experience, questions of sustainability, and designed things.
8. Insightfully interpreted the contexts for which they design.
9. Devised creative and innovative design propositions that address the challenges of the context that is being designed for.
10. Communicated their design propositions with confidence and clarity, demonstrating a professional level of visual and oral presentation skills.

Contribution to course aims and graduate attributes

This subject contributes to the development of graduate skills in the areas of:

1. creativity and innovation, by fostering:

• flexible thinking;
• a creative approach to the development of design concepts;
• an ability to challenge design conventions;
• innovative approaches to problem solving; and
• versatility in appropriate aesthetic approaches.

2. attitudes and values, by encouraging:

• an attention to issues of environmental sustainability;
• a value for the designer’s role as a global citizen;
• a reflective approach to design practice;
• a value for international and cultural diversity; and
• a reflective approach to cultural context.

3. critical thinking and research skills, especially:

• an ability to analyse and synthesise complex ideas;
• an ability to develop well supported arguments and rationales; and
• an engagement with relevant trans-disciplinary academic research.

4. practical and professional skills, by fostering:

• professional levels of craft skills appropriate to the discipline; and
• professional and ethical approaches to practice.

5. communication and interpersonal skills, by fostering:

• group leadership skills and appreciation of team dynamics;
• visual presentation skills appropriate for audience contexts; and
• professional levels of oral presentation skills.

Teaching and learning strategies

This is a semester long studio-based subject. Theoretical ideas engaged in the studio will be communicated through readings, lectures, seminars and workshop exercises.

Content

This subject addresses the following issues and topics:

• Post-humanist approaches to change-oriented design;
• Cross-cultural cosmologies of space-time and design;
• Modernity and the sublime;
• Boundaries, limits: transgression, mobility;
• Instrumental reason: critical reason: design;
• Managing uncertainty: building trust; and
• Unsustainable spatio-temporal cultures.

Assessment

Assessment Item 1: Reflections on critical design analysis

Assessment Item 2: Design Propositions

Assessment Item 3: Design Project

References

Beck, U. 2010, 'Cimate for Change, or How to Create a Green Modernity?', Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 27, no. 2-3, pp. 254-266.
Bennett, J. 2010, Vibrant matter: a political ecology of things, Duke University Press, Durham and London.
Brown, S. 2010, Eco fashion, Laurence King, London.
Clark, N. 2010, 'Volatile Worlds, Vulnerable Bodies: Confronting Abrupt Climate Change', Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 27, no. 2-3, pp. 31-51.
Cooper, M. 2010, 'Turbulent Worlds: Financial Markets and Environmental Crisis', Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 27, no. 2-3, pp. 167-190.
Crandall, J. 2010, 'The Geospatialization of Calculative Operations: Tracking, Sensing and Megacities', Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 27, no. 2-3, pp. 68-90.
Fry, T. 2003, 'The voice of sustainment: An introduction', Design Philosophy Papers, no. 1.
Fry, T. 2009, Design futuring: sustainability, ethics and new practice, Berg, Oxford.
Fry, T. 2011, Design as Politics, Berg, New York.
Fuad-Luke, A. 2009, Design activism: beautiful strangeness for a sustainable world, Earthscan, London.
Giddens, A. 1990, The Consequences of Modernity, University of Stanford Press, Stanford, California.
Giddens, A. 2000, Runaway world: how globalisation is reshaping our lives, Routledge, New York.
Giddens, A. 2008, The politics of climate change, Polity, Cambridge.
Hoffman, L. (ed.) 2007, Future fashion: white papers, Earth Pledge, New York.
Jasanoff, S. 2010, 'A new climate for society', Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 27, no. 2-3, pp. 233-253.
Jazeel, T. 2010, 'Spatializing Difference beyond Cosmopolitanism: Rethinking Planetary Futures', Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 27, no. 2-3, pp. 75-97.
Michael, M. 1996, Constructing identities: the social, the nonhuman and change, Sage, London & Thousand Oaks.
Michael, M. 2000, Reconnecting culture, technology and nature: from society to heterogeneity, Routledge, London.
Olsen, B. 2010, In defense of things, Rowman & Littlefield, Blue Ridge Summit, PA, USA.
Scarry, E. 1985, The body in pain: the making and unmaking of the world, Oxford University Press, New York.
Scarry, E. 2001, On beauty and being just, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Schatzki, T. 2010, The timespace of human activity: on performance, society and history as indeterminate teleological events, Lexington Books, Lanham, Md.
Shove, E. 2010, 'Social Theory and Climate Change: Questions Often, Sometimes and Not Yet Asked', Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 27, no. 2-3, pp. 277-288.
Urry, J. 2010, 'Consuming the Planet to Excess', Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 27, no. 2-3, pp. 191-212.
Verbeek, P.-P. 2005, What things do: philosophical reflections on technology, agency and design., Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, Pa.
Verbeek, P.-P. 2006, 'Acting artifacts: the technological mediation of action', in P.-P. Verbeek & A. Slob (eds), User behaviour and technolgoy development: shaping sustainable relationships, Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 53-60.
Verbeek, P.-P. 2011, Moralizing technology: understanding and designing the morality of things, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London.
Verbeek, P.-P. & Slob, A. (eds) 2006, User behaviour and technology development: shaping sustainable relations between consumers and technologies, Springer, Dordrecht.
Yusoff, K. 2010, 'Biopolitical Economies and the Political Aesthetics of Climate Change', Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 27, no. 2-3.