Diseña

Editorial Diseña 12

2018-02-05T16:32:17-03:00

The purpose of Diseña is to promote discussions about the implications of the methods used by designers for researching and creating. This special edition seeks to enrich the conceptual framework used in design schools to work with projects. The various articles offer a wide spectrum of strategies, concepts and theoretical references from the STS that question the teaching practice and traditional pedagogical methods.

Re-learning Design: Pedagogical Experiments with STS in Design Studio Courses

2018-02-01T00:40:15-03:00

In the last decades, design disciplines have been encountering the social sciences and humanities in inventive modes. These new collaborations entail partial redefinitions of the disciplines involved therein. On the one hand, contemporary strands of social and cultural theory – especially in the field of science and technology studies (STS), but also in anthropology – have made design much more than a mere research object. On the other hand, design disciplines have incorporated not only social research methods and ethnography, but also the type of conceptual work characteristic of social and cultural theory. This has led to a series of redefinitions of current design practices beyond the ‘problem-solving’ of user-centered design, design thinking or co-design approaches. In contrast to these current trends, some designers are increasingly describing their tasks as forms of ‘problem-making’.

On Design and Making with STS

2018-02-05T16:30:42-03:00

This is an attempt to explore the intersection between design practices and science and technology studies (STS) beyond the classroom by taking three different case studies as starting points. The article provides an overview of the central cases known as ‘design things’, ‘speculative research’ and ‘critical making’ and tries to highlight connections and differences between their engagement with STS. Thus, special attention will be paid to the concepts of ‘subpolitics’, Dingpolitik and ‘cosmopolitics’ and how these concepts seem to be relevant in reconfiguring design politics and practices. At the end, the question of how to rethink or re-learn design practices with STS will be addressed.

Teaching Everything in Relationship: Integrating Social Sciences and Design in Teaching and Professional Practice

2018-02-05T16:33:00-03:00

The availability of social sciences courses in design schools does not automatically entail the integration of social sciences in design teaching. In order to achieve such integration, social sciences cannot be relegated to the task of providing information about the context in which design artifacts circulate. This contextual view of the social sciences is based on a ’regional topology’ of the social, which must be replaced by a ’network topology’ of the social, already enacted within design practice. Through a ’network topology’, the description of the relations to which artifacts take part emerges as the ground for collaboration between design and social sciences. Such ground for collaboration is key also for teaching social sciences in design schools. The introduction of two examples of assignments that consider the common ground of description concludes the article.

Sustainable System Design at Aalborg University, Denmark

2018-02-05T16:29:07-03:00

In this paper, we discuss to what extent STS knowledge is needed and contributes to complex problem solving in design engineering. We discuss this based on experiences with the program of Sustainable Design Engineering at Aalborg University in Denmark. We claim that STS contributes in three meaningful ways: by supporting a critical view on existing knowledge; by providing tools to take into account controversies and delegation of agency; and by reasserting design as a social process.

Experimental Design as Archeological Practice

2018-02-01T00:40:21-03:00

This article presents an approach to design which is understood as an archaeological practice; that is, an inquiry that —from the Foucauldian theories— seeks to unravel the epistemic orders embedded in the machines; to show the modes of knowing they install in culture, and in society. Thus, the archaeology of knowledge is introduced as investigative approach within the realm of human sciences and, then, as a methodology for the analysis of culture in the field of media studies, through Friedrich Kittler’s and Wolfgang Ernst’s ideas. Then, an experimental design project, a thesis of the Universidad de Chile, is commented on to exemplify the modes in which such perspective transforms the activity of design and its disciplinary categories. Finally, the text draws a methodological proposal for this design, mapping out an institutional context where this proposal can be developed in full.

Tender Infrastructures: Designing with Care, or Contributions to ‘Matters of Care’ in Architecture

2018-02-01T00:40:22-03:00

Despite the fact that architecture has always been linked to issues such as hygiene, shelter, well-being and physical protection, the concept of care has only been incorporated into the concerns of architecture in recent years. Tender Infrastructures is a pedagogical experiment carried out at the University of Alicante, which takes as a frame of reference the work of some authors from the studies of science, technology and society (STS), feminist studies, posthumanism, and especially the ideas of María Puig de la Bellacasa in what she calls ‘Matters of care’. Appropriating this frame, this experiment sets out to show that care is an activity directly associated with design and the socio-material networks in which architecture is directly involved.

Pedagogical Impugnation: Interspecies Prototyping and Cosmopolitical Encounters

2018-02-01T00:40:22-03:00

In this article we will analyze the epistemological displacements experienced in the Interaction Design Workshop of the Design School of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile during an intervention carried out in the first semester of 2016 at the National Zoo of Chile (NZC). First, we describe the process of transformation of the pedagogical practices raised in the Design School at the beginning of the 21st Century and the adoption of the ethnographic turn; then, we show how the intervention in the NZC became an impugnation to the epistemological and methodological frameworks of user-centered design and problem-solving design. Through the notion of ’cosmopolitical encounters’, inspired by the work of the philosopher Isabelle Stengers, and the interspecies experience in the NZC, we conclude that prototyping is a pedagogical tool that allows us to question epistemologies and hegemonic methods, encouraging the possibility of developing a ’cosmopolitical design’.

Co-laborations, Entrapments, Intraventions: Pedagogical Approaches to Technical Democracy in Architectural Design

2018-02-01T00:40:23-03:00

A review of a series of pedagogical experiments in our work as science and technology studies (STS) scholars in a Department of Architecture is presented. Our exploration had a central conceptual concern: exploring the meaning and prospects of one of STS’s central aspirations, ‘technical democracy’, for the education of the future design professionals. Hence, after briefly summarizing the conceptual history of the term, we will then pay specific attention to a series of studio design projects at an MA level. We show our transition from an initially ‘predicative’ pedagogical mode – where the main works on technical democracy were read and explained, hoping this to have an impact on our students’ architectural practice – to a series of more ‘experiential’ ones, where the challenge of technical democracy was repurposed in three ways: as (1) co-laboration, (2) entrapment, and (3) intravention.

Learning Design with Social Insects: The ANT, the SPIDER, and the WASP

2018-02-01T00:40:24-03:00

I discuss the Architecture Design Studio Course held in 2014/15 and in 2016/17 around the topic of lifestyle migration in the changing coastal landscapes of the Mediterranean. Starting with my own experience as a student, influenced by STS concepts and the debates in the School of Architecture in Alicante, Spain, I show the limits of ANT’s (actor-network theory) extensive descriptions as a tools for teaching and learning design and, at the same time, the role they can have in stretching what architecture can be once it is connected to contemporary issues. These courses have allowed us to re-imagine, together, the many types of architects students can become. We have done it by enriching ANT with two other anthropological and philosophical concepts: anthropologist Tim Ingold’s SPIDER, whose ’Skilled Practice Involves Developmentally Embodied Responsiveness’, and places the architecture student, as a practitioner, in the center of a concrete material web that, as Spuyborek’s sympathetic WASP, is able to abstract the environment beyond the felt encounters between things and people as they shape each other.

On the Possibility of Socialist-democratic Design Things: Interview with Pelle Ehn. Interviewers: I. Farías & T. Sánchez Criado

2018-02-05T16:35:43-03:00

Pelle Ehn is Professor Emeritus at the School of Arts and Communication at Malmö University. He has been involved in collaborative and participatory design for more than four decades. For the last 15 years his research has been focused on design and digital media. He is co-author of Design Things (MIT Press, 2011) and co-editor of Making Futures: Marginal Notes on Innovation, Design, and Democracy (MIT Press, 2014). In this interview he describes some of his influences and he talks about participatory design, STS, socialism, design things, education, artefacts, social change and democratic design experiments.

For a Speculative Aesthetics of Description: Interview with Alex Wilkie. Interviewers: I. Farías, & T. Sánchez Criado

2018-02-05T16:36:29-03:00

Alex Wilkie is Director of Research in the Department of Design at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where he is also Director of the Mphil/PhD program in Design Studies and co-director of the Centre for Invention and Social Process. Wilkie has combined design and science and technology studies (STS) since the late ’90s, exploring inventive methods and research through design. He co-edited with M. Savransky and M. Rosengarten Speculative Research: The Lure of Possible Futures (Routledge, 2017) and with I. Farías Studio Studies: Operations, Topologies & Displacements (Routledge, 2016). In this interview he speaks about his relation to STS and his understanding of pedagogy, theory, politics of design, and speculative methods.

The Critical Experience of Making: Interview with Matt Ratto. Interviewers: I. Farías & T. Sánchez Criado

2018-02-05T16:23:25-03:00

Matt Ratto is Director of the Critical Making Lab in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. Ratto coined the term “critical making” to describe hands-on activities to explore the relationship between technology and society. In this interview, the author of DIY Citizenship: Critical Making and Social Media (MIT Press, 2014) speaks about the need to develop situations in order to experiment critically with matter, in order to develop newer understandings of the politics of technology.

Default. Design and Neuroscience: Interactive Work on Brain Activity at Rest

2018-02-01T16:24:48-03:00

Contrary to what was previously thought, the brain is never inactive. In fact, its greatest lucidity is evidenced when it does not pay attention to external stimuli. The interactive installation Default arises from this premise, as well as from the dialogue between design and neuroscience. This article analyzes the heuristic process and the aesthetic result of said work. It explains the hybrid route between the scientific concept and the development of an interactive and immersive work whose purpose is to captivate the audience with aesthetic enjoyment, generating curiosity about the innermost states of the mind.

Redesign of the PARN textile system: Belonging and equity from early childhood

2018-02-05T16:37:43-03:00

Since 2009, the Chilean State has provided a baby box to the families whose children are born in public hospitals. This baby box contains numerous items, from a playpen cradle to educational material, and also includes a baby carrier and a backpack. More than 160,000 children receive this benefit every year. The initiative not only reduces the expenses incurred by families who welcome a new child, but also promotes the full emotional development of children as well as the transversal development of their rights. This article describes the recent process of redesigning the elements included in the baby box, whose purpose was to promote a sense of belonging and equity. The context in which the project is inserted, its background, the referents and the process of gathering information for the proposal are also detailed.

The Fantasy Method of Urban Design

2018-02-01T00:40:20-03:00

The Fantasy Method of Urban Design is an experimental cross-disciplinary method that aims to predict the future social and technological forces impacting upon our cities, and to design such cities in line with these predictions. Utilizing fantasy is one way to expand the minds of design students beyond technical parameters or isolated spatial settings, and to expose them to a world of enlarged environmental narrative, social possibility, and political complexity. In this article, the Fantasy Method is described through three case studies inspired by three influential texts: Utopia, by Thomas More (1516); Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley (1818); and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams (1978). These case studies make use of these chosen works of fantasy not just as background ideas, but as ways to inspire narratives of change in the design of future cities. They show that to study the fantastic under the purview of future cities is not an escape into fantasy, but an active response to the many technological and industrial fantasies, both extravagant and excessive, that are so prevalent in our contemporary urban lives.