Design and Production

The course aims at giving practical and critical skills and knowledge on traditional and emerging production systems with a special focus on eco-social design. Besides the traditional production techniques and process, it introduces alternative ways of producing goods, using resources, designing a holistic system and creating a complete life cycle of a product. The course addresses production techniques from different angles and scales introducing diverse methods and processes such as mass production, craftsmanship, digital fabrication, peer2peer production, etc. through lectures and hands-on exercises (learning by doing). It concentrates on not only designing a mere product, but also creating a whole system which is ecologically and socially balanced and well-designed. The course addresses critical questions related to the role of today’s designer in designing processes and systems of production and moreover, leads students to speculate about future scenarios of plausible production systems with an eco-social awareness.