Often seen as a creative field tied to a commercial culture, design is primarily a discipline of project-making. Intersecting with other disciplines, it also engages conceptual, utopian, and speculative territories directly linked to societal questions.
In this course, an introduction to the history of design, we will explore key concepts that underpin contemporary design in its diversity, using historical references to examine current practices. Each session will focus on a specific topic through an approach to design and its history, at the intersection of aesthetics, politics, and poetics. The course will present various movements and approaches (functionalism, radical design, anti-design, speculative design, co-design, etc.), encouraging students to reflect on their personal practice and to situate their disciplinary culture within a broader context—the culture of design.
The relationship between form, function, and fiction, the connection between art and design, designers’ engagement with ethics and ecology, and the shift from object to scenario, experience, and dematerialization will be some of the concepts we will examine to consider the role of designers within society.