GSML 530: Design Seminar I: Critical Theory

SubjectGSML
Course No530
Academic LevelGR
Credits3.00
DescriptionThis seminar provides students with a broad historical, critical, and theoretical context within which to understand the trajectory of contemporary designing, and in particular, the emergence of new fields such as transformation design. By exploring the shift from traditional disciplines to hybrid practices aimed at reshaping culture and society, design is being transformed both from within and outside the practice. In this course we examine the implications of design decisions; the ways that design changes the world and the way the world changes design. Through a review of the literature and case studies that have impacted behavior or cultural change, students will learn about the capabilities of transformation design, its poetics and positioning, its meta or expanding nature necessitated by the wicked problems of the 21st century, and its evolution into a critical, social, economic and ethical agent for change.