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Regenerative future(s); A new educational framework for design education on the twenty-first century
Get PDFAmidst the environmental collapse, it is imperative that academia reflects on how future designers need to unlearn and shift the industrial design mindset to proactively and responsibly design to remediate the present creating a more ecological and just future(s). The next generation of designers must catalyse a shift in design reflecting ecological and social values into their professional outputs. This paper sets up the contested issues for design futures against a background of industrialisation, climate change, and de-anthropocentrisation and moves towards asking how design futures can develop restorative futures. Here we aim to address the RCA educational challenge of moving away from traditional future design approaches (design fictions, futures visions, and speculative design) to transition towards Re-futuring. In the paper, we describe a selection of PhD research projects at the RCA that take different trajectories in exploring new practices and approaches to design futures. From this point, we will triangulate literatures between contemporary ecological critiques, systems, and contemporary future critiques to underpin the problems and opportunities emerging for design to propose a new academic model for replacing Industrial design
Mit Amos Gitai in Thüringen: Die letzten tage des Bauhäuslers Munio Weinraub in Deutschland
No full textThe rhinoceros is an emblem of Europe. Since antiquity, it has been associated with imperial power: as a heraldic animal, a precious gift among potentates, and a center of spectacle. But its horn and armor, relics of a primeval beast, are a heavy legacy: thick-skinned and resilient, well-fed and sure-footed, it could look confidently to the future. But its vision is limited, hence its irritability. How can a half-blind, multi-ton animal dare to take the leap into the future? Rhinoceros 5 addresses the lies that are eroding our society. Right-wing authoritarian forces want to make lies the truth once again. How do we respond to this attack on the struggle for truthfulness? And how can the republic be defended against the distortion of reality? With contributions from Forensic Architecture, Jacques Derrida, Isabel Capeloa Gil, Ricardo Domeneck, Kossi Efoui, Angélica Freitas, Jan Friedrich, Mohamed Kerrou, Alexander Koller, Jean Hérald Legagneur, Curzio Malaparte, Herta Müller, Oliver Precht, Lars Ramberg, Cord Riechelmann, Diana María Rodríguez Vértiz, Željana Tunić, Sun Wei, Ines Weizman, Isabel Zapata and the rhinoceroses of Friederike Groß
An evaluation study of AiLoupe : An AI driven design tool to source and select textile materials
Get PDFDesigners typically source materials physically in expos, collections, and shops, relying on their touch and tacit knowledge. Whilst effective, this process faces challenges such as time constraints, inefficiency, and limited transparency. Amidst a rise in new digital tools to aid in textile material selection, there is a gap in evaluation studies of how these tools contribute towards the designer’s Material Sourcing Journey (MSJ), particularly taking into account the sensory experience of materials. This paper presents a study involving 22 textile, fashion and product designers to evaluate AiLoupe, a mobile app which uses image recognition and a purpose-built Sensory Materials Library to aid designers to identify, select, and source materials in the studio and at fabric expos. Results highlight AiLoupe’s potential to streamline workflows, support sustainability, and improve collaboration through its structured Material Data Cards (MDCs). Insights emphasize designers’ need for comparison tools, clearer performance scales, and enhanced accuracy of physical material identification
Who killed care?: A critique on the Groys/Sade paradox of self-care
No full textBoris Groys recently introduced his Philosophy of Care (2022). In Groys’s view, care should be elevated to a paramount value in our lives. Care entails not only the provision of physical well-being but also the nurturing of our social and emotional bonds. He argues that care is an antidote to the alienation and isolation that often afflict contemporary society. This emphasis on care, Groys believes, can transform our interpersonal relationships, fostering a more compassionate and empathetic society. In the context of Groys’s philosophy, the juxtaposition of care and self-care assumes significant importance. While care represents a collective and outward-focused ethical principle, self-care concerns individual well-being and self-preservation. Groys acknowledges the value of self-care, particularly in situations where one’s own well-being is at risk. However, he warns against the excessive prioritisation of self-care at the expense of caring for others and the broader community. Furthermore, Groys proposes that care extends beyond the human realm. He suggests that our responsibility for the care of the environment and non-human entities is equally vital. This ecological dimension of care reflects his deep concern for the planet’s well-being in the face of environmental crises. In this context, care becomes a moral imperative that requires us to re-evaluate our relationship with nature and to act as carers, rather than exploiters
Entanglements of care: Dissolving boundaries of time, geography and scale
No full textIn navigating the intricate web of social, political, and ecological challenges, care and design emerge as intertwined and powerful forces for transformation. However, both are often constrained by limiting and narrow definitions. In this chapter, we challenge some of these limitations by looking at care as a relational and interconnected act that transcends time, scale, and geography. We explore interconnectedness across humans, non-humans, and all forms of life, challenging conventional boundaries and hierarchies that separate humans from other species. We also explore how care is situated culturally and geographically, and how differences in language shape our understanding of it
Advancing textile damage segmentation: A novel RGBT dataset and thermal frequency normalization
Get PDFRGB-Thermal (RGBT) semantic segmentation is an emerging technology for identifying objects and materials in high dynamic range scenes. Thermal imaging particularly enhances feature extraction at close range for applications such as textile damage detection. In this paper, we present RGBT-Textile, a novel dataset specifically developed for close-range textile and damage segmentation. We meticulously designed the data collection protocol, software tools, and labeling process in collaboration with textile scientists. Additionally, we introduce ThermoFreq, a novel thermal frequency normalization method that reduces temperature noise effects in segmentation tasks. We evaluate our dataset alongside six existing RGBT datasets using state-of-the-art (SOTA) models. Experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of the SOTA models with ThermoFreq, highlighting its effectiveness in addressing noise challenges inherent in RGBT semantic segmentation across diverse environmental conditions. We make our dataset publicly accessible to foster further research and collaborations
A bestiary of distributed intelligence: Topologies of fascist emergence
Get PDFThis thesis investigates the materialism of distributed forms of synthetic intelligence and characterises the paradigm shift implied by the proliferation of AI technologies. It examines the ontological politics of AI’s analytical, generative, and learning processes, exposing the metaphysical burdens embedded in AI architectures and infrastructures. The thesis analyses the transformed economy of meaning production and distribution in contemporary knowledge systems, which differ not only from the pre-digital past but also from earlier forms of algorithmic circulation. Without ascribing inherent culpability to AI for exclusion or social bias, it explores how AI can participate in the reproduction of fascistic logic, focusing on AI-generated simulacra, their circulation dynamics, and their topological transformations. The synthetic structures analysed are approached as complex, multimodal, distributed systems far from equilibrium, studied through complexity science and the tensions between old and new materialist philosophies. The philosophical investigation is grounded in art practice, involving the poietic manipulation of AI systems and experimental engagements with generative algorithms. Chapter 1: The Book of Meat vivisects the materiality of synthetic circulations, exploring how fascist seduction and the clustering of exclusionary content operate within distributed synthetic systems. It analyses forms of cohesion that emerge across multiple simultaneous logics, enabling rapid shifts, cascading effects, and break-offs of meaning. Moving away from post-psychoanalytic and instrumental interpretations of fascist mass psychology, it instead emphasises the sensuous dimensions of violence and the mimetic pleasures that emerge through the circulation of algorithmically generated media. Chapter 2: The Book of Clouds proposes an original reformulation of mood as a material orientation of the political, always situated in the systemic present, rather than expressible only through future or past modalities (neither foretaste nor aftertaste). Building on Heidegger’s “mattering to,” Golding’s “return of difference,” and Sharpe’s Wake, it presents mood as a plural “turning”: an emergent, distributed mode of motion comparable to a tensor field. This redefinition enables the identification of new emergent forms through which exclusionary atmospheres are captured and perpetuated across the architectures and outputs of generative AIs, particularly through pre-established and applied “styles”. Chapter 3: The Book of Worms investigates AI’s relationship with contingency, novelty, and undecidability, examining the generative logics of large language models and, more broadly, stochastic AIs. It critically interrogates the claim that AI is inherently regurgitative, questioning whether synthetic intelligence can produce logical leaps rather than merely recombine learned patterns. Through experiments with Polymorph, a physical, complex adaptive AI system developed collaboratively at AIDLab, the chapter argues that the logic of reassembly is not inevitable. It demonstrates that AIs attuned to their physical circumstances and not constrained within linear architectures can develop emergent, self-organising, and exploratory behaviours
Housing Standardisation project data
Get PDFThis dataset was produced as part of the research project Housing Standardisation: The Architecture of Regulations and Design Standards and supports the publication Housing Standardisation and Design Governance (Routledge). The dataset includes: 1) Over 1,000 housing type plans with dimensional data from England, Chile, China, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland. 2) Thirty-seven in-depth cartographies of homes incorporating visual records, models, interviews, and home use studies. 3) Recordings of interviews with residents, housing stakeholders, and professionals. Documentation of project exhibitions, films, and public events. 4)An annotated list of housing standards, manuals, and acts in England since 1667, with links to publicly available documents. 5) A static archive of the project website (housingstandardisation.com)
BRINK with Zoe Laughlin and Freddie Robins
No full textThis conversation focuses on contemporary thoughts about play, making and breaking, entitled Brink as a frame for playing with stuff up to and even beyond breaking point in part to understand material, its form, functions, processes and meanings. And perhaps sometimes just for the hell of it! Brought together because of their shared interests and practices, which include investigating the properties and conventions of matter, from the mundane to the magical, the contributors are Zoe Laughlin, a designer and materials engineer who studied Art then Science and co-founded the Institute of Making, and Freddie Robins an award-winning artist and educator who challenges the perception of knitting as a benign, undervalued domestic activity, pushing it into sculptural and metaphorical territories