RE.Futuring Craft

Catalog description

This project guides students to explore how historical artifacts can serve as tools for emotional reflection and cultural reconstruction. Drawing inspiration from the speculative and critical design practices of Dunne and amp; Raby, the course invites students to revisit and reinterpret the past by engaging with objects that bear traces of forgotten functions, lost identities, and overlooked craftsmanship. Rather than approaching design through the conventional lens of user-centered utility and functional optimization, students are encouraged to shift their focus to the object itself—its material presence, imagined voice, and emotional residue. This object-centered perspective fosters a more imaginative and critical approach, where design becomes a means of speculation and storytelling. By attuning themselves to the quiet narratives embedded within these artifacts, students reimagine their meanings, forms, and functions, placing them in conversation with contemporary cultural contexts. In doing so, they move beyond surface usability to forge empathetic connections grounded in the object's history, ambiguity, and cultural resonance. These reflections ultimately lead to the redesign and physical making of the objects, allowing students to translate speculative interpretations into crafted forms that carry renewed cultural and emotional significance. This course is for CMU Juniors and Senior in the School of Design. Students external to Design must have approved access to a three-dimensional prototyping lab and equipment within their home department.