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Pedagogy of Experimental Design: Scientific research methods in architectural education
No full textBio-design is a growing field in architecture that focuses on integrating biological processes and systems into the design of buildings and urban environments. This approach draws inspiration from nature and seeks to create sustainable and regenerative structures that can adapt to changing environmental conditions. Architecture students are increasingly becoming involved in the design and execution of bio-design experiments, leveraging their interdisciplinary knowledge and design skills to create innovative solutions that integrate biology and design principles. This allows students to explore new avenues of research and to develop a deeper understanding of the intersection between design and the natural world. This paper highlights a pedagogical strategy for introducing architecture students to bio-design and bio-fabrication within a wet lab environment. It identifies the challenges as well as the necessity for offering interdisciplinary courses to meet contemporary environmental concerns
Design fiction and the art of anticipation
No full textIn this paper we show how design fiction is a form of design inquiry that offers methods for understanding and reacting towards intractable societal challenges. More specifically we unravel how narrative and literary practices of world-making used in design fiction can be of value for researching life changing, but unknown futures. We argue that this contribution has been largely overlooked because design fiction is too often wrongly caught up in discussions of the limitations of speculative design. Additionally, we substantiate our claim by making a study of Design Futures courses addressing the challenge of unknown energy futures in an era of energy crises. In so doing we shed new light on design fiction as an art of anticipation and how it may contribute to Future Literacy more broadly
Community Empowerment: Lessons learned from a Local Health Programme
No full textThe use of complex public health systems to empower communities is often met with challenges and frustrations. Community empowerment programmes focus on improving mental and physical health needs, enabling individuals to become active members of the local community through collective actions. Design research plays a crucial role in understanding the interactions between health and communities. Healthier Fleetwood is a successful community empowerment program in the northwest of the UK, that connects residents with local services, groups, and events to foster a sense of community and encourage them to control their health and well-being. The success of this approach and its impact on health has been reflected in encouraging trends for reduced GP and A&E visits by Fleetwood residents. Nevertheless, the why and how behind the success of this community programme and its impact had never been previously captured and understood. The aim of the research, reported in this paper, was to develop an in-depth understanding of what impact is understood to be for the community and those engaged in the Healthier Fleetwood initiative, in order to replicate benefits to other UK towns. To achieve this, the research team employed design research methods, such as co-design workshops, day in a life, photovoice, design blueprint, and conversation methods. The findings identified 12 key lessons learnt, that can be used to develop similar Health Community Programmes in other UK towns. These findings can be grouped into three key themes: working closely with the community, having enhanced communication and the programme structure
Co-Designing with Immigrant Women to imagine an Equitable Mental Health Service Ecosystem
No full textImmigrants currently represent a quarter of the Canadian population, and this continues to increase as more people move due to social, financial, political, and environmental causes. However, this population experiences a considerable decline in their health over time upon their arrival; thus, making immigrant health a crucial public health issue. Immigrant women in specific experience a variety of stressors including employment, family support, and cultural shock regarding gender roles, which put their mental health at high risk. Therefore, mental health inequities should be tackled by putting equity and intersectionality front and center. The wide amount of literature supporting the benefits of nature interaction on mental and physical health (Birch et al., 2020; Kotera et al. 2020; Lorentzen & Viken, 2022; Shanahan et al., 2015) makes it a promising method to support the mental health of immigrant women, as well as the overwhelmed health system. Based on the complexity of the health issue identified, this design research project aimed to use a participatory approach to gather key insights from immigrant women to acquire an understanding of the needs and potential interventions to achieve accessible nature interactions for public mental health. For this study, twenty-one immigrant women from various geographical backgrounds living across the Greater Toronto Area were recruited to participate in one-on-one interviews and two co-design sessions. These activities revealed that immigrant women indeed experience positive emotions as a result of nature interactions. However, they also experience barriers like distance, time, and lack of information that keep them from engaging with nature more often. Furthermore, their participation also uncovered key areas of concern in the immigrant experience, which contribute to a high amount of daily stress, and little to no time for self-care and emotional relief. Using systems design tools during the co-design sessions served to identify the main areas of challenge for this population across the system, as well as specific values and practices that participants would like to see across system scales. The emergent character of the design research approach used, led to the development of an Equitable Mental Health Ecosystem model (see Figure 1). This model is a service design ecosystem that could facilitate equitable mental health by providing alignment to mental health providers and major funding bodies through three sets of foundational values and practices that guarantee equitable and intentional support for a diverse population. Acknowledging the mental and social burdens behind the immigrant experience, adopting the proposed model can be life-changing to those populations that for decades, have encountered barriers in their mental health-seeking journey. In conclusion, this study approaches a complex community health topic to propose a service ecosystem model that attempts to make mental health care accessible, resilient, community-driven, sustainable, and equitable
Arousing “Arts of Making” in design: cultivating growing material societal meanings for sustainable transitions
No full textUnder the industrial mass production of the 20th century, “making” is controllable and directed by “thinking” in artifact design activities, which formalizes the dominant pattern of “reactive making”, meaning “making following thinking”. The initiative of “making” has been continually weakened and overlooked. Meanwhile, properties of the physical material are defined by the disciplines of Science and Engineering, acting as the “tags” or “surface textures” in CAD for designers to select after the conceptualizing process in design practices. We found tons of nameless and meaningless materials have been surged forth in an uncontrolled way, which has grown a cultural and societal sharp disconnection with human beings, consequently instigating a cascade of environmental crises. In response to this challenge, we delved deeply and unearthed the underlying making paradigm that drives the current predominant approach to designing artifacts. By conducting thorough historical research, we retraced the origins of the concept of making and its evolution, as discussed by five prominent thinkers: Aristotle, Herbert Simon, John Dewey, Paul Carter, and Tim Ingold. These scholars\u27 ideas converge within the domains of both making and design. Following a further and in-depth comparative analysis, we identified two separate yet interconnected paradigms of making —namely, the Science of Making (SoM) and the Arts of Making (AoM). As a result, we formulated four essential principles of the becoming-with concept within the framework of AoM. We further exemplified the practical implementations of these principles through grounded research and case studies
Unpacking strategies for E-textile design for Disassembly
No full textThe demand for E-textiles is anticipated to experience substantial growth in the future, particularly in the realm of sports and fitness applications. However, the increased usage and rapid obsolescence of E-textiles could result in a substantial accumulation of electronic textile waste, leading to environmental and health risks if not properly managed. The recycling and disposal of E-textile waste currently face significant obstacles as existing normative, classifications and technologies have not adapted to this new waste stream. To address these challenges, researchers have proposed the implementation of eco-design principles from the early stages of product design, emphasizing waste prevention through design for recyclability (DfR), modularity (DfM), and disassembly (DfD). However, the research on these principles in E-textiles remains scant. This paper conducts a comprehensive literature review complemented by several industrial case studies on DfD, DfM and DfR principles in E-textiles to understand their feasibility and effectiveness from both the academic and industrial perspective. The main finding of this preliminary study is the framing of four distinct strategies of Design for Disassembly (DfD) for E-textiles, based on the adopted disassembly methods that have crucial repercussions on the design and creative phases: (i) Modular designs aimed at fast disassembly of e-textiles; (ii) Bonding, printing, and 3D printing electronics; (iii) Disassembly techniques of woven or embroidered electronic integration; (iv) embedded electronics biodegradability). From these strategies, the paper aims to draft guidelines for designers and manufacturers in the E-textile industry aiming to start a dialogue to promote innovation and sustainability and foster a more environmentally conscious approach to E-textile design and manufacturing
Recrafting textile futures: Caring and repairing as a way to design
No full textTextiles and clothing, are produced through a global supply chain that is both extractive and linear, embedded in an economic model leading to exponential growth in waste across every stage in the supply chain. Often sustainable textile solutions and innovations are coupled with economic development, making the movement from linear to circular appear as a descending spiral to waste that plunders the earth. Eco-modern solutions meant to reverse the damage caused by the mass production of clothing need a repositioning toward a longer horizon. This paper explores ways to transition toward reparative practices through craft and recrafting processes, reflection on the experience of the recrafting of existing and underutilized textiles, connecting to the long horizon to explore the potential for new design practices contributing to design for repair that may cross scales, from personal, and local consumer level to global and systemic to extend the temporal nature of textiles and clothing toward one aligned with natures cycle and to repair the wrongs of fashion past. This mixed method approach is meant to counteract the fast-paced waste stream of clothing design cycles and seeks answers to questions such as our relationship with the clothing in need of repair, our limits toward their brokenness, and how capturing reflections through autoethnographic journaling can bring about transitions through practices of care and repair needed in stopping the flow of textiles as waste feed. This work seeks ways of transitioning from broken relationships with textiles through recrafting materials combined with a reflective experiential approach to develop an intergenerational clothing design method toward a sustainable and just future
Development and integration of a capacitive sensor in a pleated woven structure using Tango chirimen production methods
No full textThis case study is an example of ongoing collaborative initiatives between the Kyoto Prefectural Institute for Northern Industry, Kyoto, Japan working with the international network created by the annual Textiles Summer School (Cassim et al, 2017) in Kyoto initiated and directed by Julia Cassim to explore new weave and product possibilities using the weave, yarn and technology of Tango chirimen crêpe, a traditional kimono fabric from Kyoto and the Japanese Jacquard loom. Written from a technical standpoint, it centres on the challenges of interpreting and realising the concept of the lead designer / educator to create a hybrid silk fabric with a pleated structure with integrated conductive fibre to allow the textile to be used as a capacitive sensor. Inspired by Issey Miyake’s “Pleats, Please” exhibition, this fabric was linked to an electric circuit and became an interactive system that changes pre-recorded sound according to the expansion and contraction of the pleats. The collaboration was facilitated exclusively online with all parties sharing ideas and the results of parallel prototyping through hybrid methods, which we designate as an “interpretative collaboration.” Lectures, instructional and contextual videos created for the Textiles Summer School 2022 (TSS 2022) were provided while academic papers, translated communication, and drawings were used to address the details of the project and supported the dialogue between parties which was facilitated by Cassim and the TSS 2022 team. Apart from the woven samples, a zine-like publication will be available to students interested in understanding the principles of e-textiles capacitance
