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• Undergraduate study:
• Courses
• Order a prospectus
• How to apply
• Information for applicants
• Why choose Kingston University
• Disability and mental health support
• Accommodation
• Undergraduate fees
• Fees, funding and payments
• Access, participation and inclusion

Critical Issues in Furniture and Product Design: Research and Practice

• Module code: HA5104
• Year: 2018/9
• Level: 5
• Credits: 30
• Pre-requisites: None
• Co-requisites: None

Summary

This module builds on the historical and thematic content introduced at Level 4 and emphasises the theorisation of contemporary furniture and product design practice. A series of lectures, seminars, workshops, tutorials, screenings and visits informs and support your own emerging research interests and the development of independent visual and academic research skills that cross history/theory and design practice. Lectures and seminars will deepen critical and theoretical engagement with contemporary issues in furniture and product design. Seminar tasks and assessments are carefully designed to foreground projects that support the location of furniture and product design as a discipline. Research methodologies are introduced though case studies and practical activities that reflect the issues explored through the module's contemporary content.

Aims

• To engage students with current practises and debates concerning contemporary furniture and product design;
• To provide students with a comprehensive understanding of key critical and theoretical positions in relation to the production, dissemination and consumption of furniture and product design in contemporary culture;
• To enable students to engage and reflect on research methodologies and critical approaches to furniture and product design;
• To facilitate a greater reflective, critical and creative engagement with the study of furniture and product design through objects, images and texts ;
• To encourage students to articulate their own experiences and interests as designers and researchers in relation to historical and contemporary concerns and to create an opportunity for student to identify and develop a chosen area of individual research useful and relevant to their practice.

Learning outcomes

On successful completion of the module, students will be able to:

• Demonstrate a depth of knowledge of the current practices and critical debates concerning contemporary furniture and product design;
• Articulate and apply the ideas of a range of key critical and theoretical positions in relation to the production, dissemination and consumption of furniture and product design in contemporary culture;
• Present an informed and creative engagement with the ways furniture and product design research can be approached methodologically;
• Demonstrate a reflective, critical and creative engagement with furniture and product design through visual, material and textual examples;
• Articulate their own experiences as designers and researchers in relation to historical and contemporary concerns
• Locate their own research practice and personal interests in a self-directed chosen area and identify personal research objectives and key resources.

Curriculum content

• The material culture of technology
• The dematerialisation of the product: converging devices
• Domestic technology: more work for mother
• Cyborg: technology and the body
• Donald Norman and emotional design
• Sustainability and emotionally durable design, cradle-to-cradle thinking
• Bright Green Design and sustainability
• Wild Things: personal possessions and everyday objects
• Love Objects: ritual objects, fetish, religious devotion and enchantment
• Do-It-Yourself: handcraft and amateur making, instructables, hacking and modding
• The language of new media: modularity and variability
• Simulacra and simulation: 3D printing and rapid prototyping
• Design rhetoric: objects as arguments
• Designing the future: science fiction imagining the material future
• Design fictions: hertzian tales and critical design

Teaching and learning strategy

This module will integrate subject content and research skills through lectures, seminars tutorials, screenings and visits. Hands-on workshop seminars enable the application of research skills to explore a range of current issues affecting research and practice in contemporary issues in product and furniture design. 

The module will make use of the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) Canvas for communication and dissemination of information between students and staff as well as making online learning materials available to all. Students should check this site on a daily basis for module information, timetables, sign-ups, updates and additional information and teaching materials.

All courses based in the Kingston School of Art offer students free access to the online video tutorial platform Lynda.com. This provides a wide range of subjects to choose from, many with downloadable exercise files, including software tutorials covering photography, graphics, web design, audio and music, CAD and Microsoft Office software, as well as courses on Business and Management skills. Some of these are embedded in the curriculum and offer additional self-paced learning, others may be taken at will by students wishing to broaden their employability skills in other areas.

Breakdown of Teaching and Learning Hours

Assessment strategy

This module will be assessed through a 2500 word Essay (50%) and a Research Portfolio (50%). In the first part of this module students will produce an essay which responds to a set question relating to the issues, debates and themes explored during the course and developed through students' own disciplinary interests. The Research Portfolio is the repository for each student's response to set tasks, exercises and self-initiated research. This will include a range of tasks such as image and object analyses, an exhibition review, a photo essay and a Dissertation Proposal that will serve to identify and locate an area of individual research related to the student's design practice and map out aims, objectives and resources to be investigated in future study at Level 6. 

Essay (2,500 words)                           50%

Research Portfolio                              50%

BA Art and Design History & Practice students only:

BA Art and Design History and Practice students will submit a 2500 word Essay (50%) and a Research Portfolio (50%).  In the first part of this module students will produce an essay which responds to a set question relating to the issues, debates and themes explored during the course and developed through students' own disciplinary interests. The Research Portfolio is the repository for each student's response to set tasks, exercises and self-initiated research. This will include a range of tasks such as image and object analyses, an exhibition review and a photo essay.

The Research Portfolio will include either a Dissertation Proposal or a Critical Reflection (both approximately 1200 words). Only one of these forms of assessment can be submitted per HA51.. module, and each can only be submitted once across both modules. The Dissertation proposal will serve to identify and locate an area of individual research related to the student's design practice and map out aims, objectives and resources to be investigated in future study at Level 6. The Critical Reflection allows students to reflect on the hybridity of their course, to evaluate the similarities and differences in methods and ideas encountered across the Level 5 modules and to consider the influence that this cross disciplinary learning may have had on their research interests as they prepare to progress to Level 6. 

Incoming Erasmus students only:

Erasmus students studying for 1 year will submit a 2500 word Essay (50%) and a Research Portfolio (50%).  In the first part of this module students will produce an essay which responds to a set question relating to the issues, debates and themes explored during the course and developed through students' own disciplinary interests. The Research Portfolio is the repository for each student's response to set tasks, exercises and self-initiated research. This will include a range of tasks such as image and object analyses, an exhibition review and a photo essay.

Erasmus students studying for one teaching block (TB1 or TB2) will have an option of submitting either the 2500 Essay or the Research Portfolio.  The Research Portfolio will include a range of tasks such as image and object analyses, an exhibition review and photo essay.  This will need to be discussed and agreed with the student's Personal Tutor or Course Leader.

Feedback and feed forward will be provided for elements of the research portfolio, as these are initiated as part of scheduled teaching activities.

Mapping of Learning Outcomes to Assessment Strategy (Indicative)

Elements of Assessment

Achieving a pass

It IS NOT a requirement that any element of assessment is passed separately in order to achieve an overall pass for the module.

Bibliography core texts

Attfield, J. (2000) Wild Things: The Material Culture of Everyday Life. Oxford: Berg.

Chapman, J. (2005) Emotionally Durable Design: Objects, Experiences and Empathy. Sterling, VA: Earthscan.

Dunne, A. (1999) Hertzian Tales: Electronic Products, Aesthetic Experience and Critical Design. London: Royal College of Art.

Norman, D. (2005) Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books.

Sterling, B. (2005) Shaping Things. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Bibliography recommended reading

Buchanan, R. 'Declaration By Design: Rhetoric, Argument, and Demonstration in Design

Practice.' In Margolin, V. (ed.) (1989) Design Discourse: History, Theory, Criticism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 91-118.

Candlin, F. & Guins, R. (eds.) (2008) The Object Reader. London: Routledge.

Charney, D. (2012) The Power of Making: The Case for Making and Skills. London: V&A Publishing.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997) Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books.

Dormer, P. (1997) The Culture of Craft. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Dunne, A. & Raby, F. (2001) Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects. Basel: Birkhäuser.

Gauntlett, D. (2011) Making is Connecting: The Social Meaning of Creativity. London: Polity Press.

Levine, F & Heimerl, C. (2008) Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft and Design. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press.

Mau, B. (2004) Massive Change: A Manifesto for Future Global Design Culture, London: Phaidon Press.

McDonagh, D. (2004) Design and Emotion: The Experience of Everyday Things. London: Taylor & Francis.

McDonough, W. & Braungart, M. (2002) Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. New York: North Point Press.

Moggridge, B. (2006) Designing Interactions, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Norman, D. (1998) The Design of Everyday Things. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

---. (2007) The Design of Future Things. New York: Basic Books.

Papanek, Victor. (1985) Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change. London: Thames & Hudson.

---. (1995) The Green Imperative: Ecology and Ethics in Design and Architecture. London: Thames & Hudson.

Poster, M. (ed.) (2001) Jean Baudrillard / Selected Writings. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Shedroff, N. (2009) Design is the Problem: The Future of Design Must be Sustainable. New York, NY: Rosenfeld Media.

Sterling, B. (2002) Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years. New York: Random House.

Thackara, J. (2005)  In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World.  Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Wajcman, J. (2004) Technofeminism. Oxford: Polity Press.

Woodward, I. (ed.) (2007) Understanding Material Culture. London: Sage Publications.

Zylinska, J. (ed.) (2002) The Cyborg Experiments: The Extensions of the Body in the Media Age. London: Continuum.

Journals

Abitare

Blueprint

Domus

ICON

ID

Journal of Design History

Leonardo

Technology and Culture

Websites

DesignAddict

Designboom

Dezeen - Architecture and Design Magazine.

Worldchanging.