Design for Emerging Sustainable Futures
This theme explores design’s capacity to discover, amplify, and imagine possible new realities. Courses invite students to strengthen their future literacy and teach them how to use it as lever for transformation. The theories and methods that are part of the theme will provide students with cutting edge perspectives on social, environmental and technological issues, and will help them formulate a role for themselves as critical, reflective and creative future-makers.
The following programme electives and design studio are offered within this theme:
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5 EC, Spring Semester - Q3
This course explores how design can shift from unsustainable practices to fostering regenerative and transformative imaginaries. Students will examine design's role in shaping future societal, political, economic, and environmental outcomes. They will also gain hands-on experience experimenting with futuring techniques in real-world contexts. -
5 EC, Fall Semester - Q2
This course explores counter-hegemonic design for emerging technologies that shape society, helping students critically engage with how these technologies influence social relations. They learn to apply critical approaches at the intersection of design, technology, and social justice, empowering them to challenge systemic oppressions and design for more equitable futures. -
5 EC, Fall Semester - Q6
This course examines how designers can work with new perspectives that consider the world as interconnected human and nonhuman entities. Students will learn theories and methods like "thing ethnography," applying them to real-world cases to shift design's focus from products to systems to relations. -
10 EC, Spring Semester - Q3 & Q4
This design studio synthesises methodologies, theories, and critical perspectives from the previous three courses, merging ontologies, technologies, and methods into fluid and responsive prototyping. Through physical making and imagination, it fosters speculative experiences that offer critical reflections on future technology integration in daily life.