Design History and Theory is offered at introductory and advanced levels to students across design disciplines. The courses are designed to engage with and reflect upon emergent practices and discourses in contemporary design.
Introduction to Theory and History of Design I
Design Interrelations: Technological Development and Social Justice
Lecture series
As designers, we contribute to making the future of our communities and environment. This lecture series looks at the roles and responsibilities of design in contributing towards issues of social justice and planetary health. Throughout the course we critically and creatively explore the relations between design and society with a focus on its ethical, political, technological and environmental dimensions. We visit some of the key moments in design history, demonstrating the strong link between designers’ engagement with prevailing technologies and their vision of reform, beauty, and social change. We furthermore explore principles and practices in design that aim to ensure a more equitable distribution of design’s benefits and burdens. In particular, this series discusses the ideologies of design tools and products, and the legacies through which they were given form by exploring design through the lenses of materials, tools, media, consumption and systems.
Course language: German
Theory and History of Design I
Audiences in Design: From Passive Consumers to Active Users
Pro-seminar
The understanding of audiences in design is in transition. Former ideas of viewers, spectators and consumers understood audiences as passive. New ideas have shaped more active terms such as users, participants, respondents and ‘prosumers’. Novel creative strategies and technological applications have responded to, engaged with, and produced these new audiences. This pro-seminar explores the birth of the user as a key figure in design production. In particular, we seek to understand the way technological objects and processes shape the way designers understand and conceive of users. On the one hand, technologies influence the way designers design for, gather information about and imagine their users. On the other, designers create technologies and artefacts that shape individual behaviours, identities and subjectivities. For this pro-seminar we read and compare texts that problematise the notion of the ‘user’ and critically examine the agency of people we design for.
Course language: German
Material Culture II
Material Culture: Theoretical Insights into Design for Health
Seminar
This seminar examines intersections of theory and design for beauty, health care, and medical affairs. It discusses the historical obligations of human-centred design for health, from surgical instruments to prosthetics, medical furniture, sportswear, cosmetic gadgets, and digital health apps. The students will learn how materials, health cultures, hygiene policies, and design philosophies contribute to modern medical practices and human-user experiences. This course equips the students to assess the connections between materiality, science, technology and creative interventions, promoting their future contributions to applied human-centred design.
Course language: English
Design and Diversity
Design from Other Worlds
Pro-seminar
This proseminar critically examines and challenges the prevailing paradigms in design practice by integrating diverse methodologies and perspectives. It seeks to move beyond the status quo, which often centers on Western-centric and industrial approaches, and instead explores alternative design practices from across the globe. This course highlights the marginalization of traditional craft processes and the neglect of intrinsic design values that arise from a singular focus on rapid innovation. Through an exploration of examples such as the manipulative plastic industry, slow textile ethics, barefoot architecture, and homogenized graphics, the proseminar critiques the monopolization of mainstream design paradigms and explores alternative design practices, particularly from the non-Western world. The course promotes a critical dialogue that questions conventional industry-centric viewpoints and encourages the inclusion of marginalized voices and practices.
Course language: English
Kolloquium für Master- und Doktoratsstudierende
Course language: English