Design with Climate Change

Catalog description

The course explores how design can respond to environmental problems and climate change. In analyzing past attempts, the course starts with decolonizing turn of the century admirations for primitivism and ends with the cyber punks planning new environments online. Following the work of architects, artists, urban planners, graphic designers and fashionista, the course will review histories of adaptation and ways to design with climate. The class will decolonize modernist design schemes, and focus on better ways to design with climate. We will also devote time to discuss topics such as building closed ecological systems, counterculture designs, cyber environments, sick building syndrome, biomimetics, eco-fashion, earth art, and other methods to design within the realm of nature. The overall objective is twofold; to survey the larger historical context of ecological design and define specific contributions to the climate change debate. Ultimately, the students will be asked to design, develop, and participate in an ecologically driven conceptual final design project of their choice.