Curriculum: Design

Architecture | Fine Arts | Humanities & Sciences | Interdisciplinary Studios

DESIGN

DESGN605 Design Research: Shades of Green (Graduate)
Instructors: Brenda Laurel & Kristian Simsarian
What is the meaning of "green?" California has led the way in many green products, services, and movements. But evidence suggests that a large segment of the general public in California lacks understanding of "green values" or sustainability. Many people believe that anything characterized as "green" will implicitly require them to give something up, whether it be design style, quality, profitability, or sensory pleasure. Our quest is to discover the meanings of "green" afoot in California culture and discover through research how to reframe "green" for a variety of California audiences.

First in the research and strategy track, this course introduces students to the theory and practice of various types of design research including human-centered qualitative and ethnographic methods, as well as formal and analytical techniques. These methods are always best taught through actual practice with a topic and/or demographic in mind. Students design imaginative tools to expand understanding. Representational methods such as personas and scenarios function to help students see and articulate patterns in qualitative data to inform design. The goal is to provide students with research-based skills and resources to strengthen strategic design practice.

DESGN614 DE: Biology Master Metaphor (Graduate)
Instructors: Steve Holt & Mara Skov Holt
Can a product defy gravity like a gecko's foot? Can a graphic achieve intense color without pigments like a butterfly's wing? Can a car store energy like a photosynthetic plant? Can a fabric change color spontaneously like a chameleon's skin? Can a chair be engineered like a bird's skeleton? Can we get more out of the burdock seed than Velcro? This investigative studio considers the wealth of inspiration that biology has to offer designers of all stripes. While physics can be seen as the dominant science of the 20th century, biology is rapidly achieving dominance in the 21st century. Students explore offshoots of biological science to inform and inspire new directions in materials, form, function, and meaning making.

DESGN614 GE: Green Luxury (Graduate)
Instructor: Marta Salas-Porras
Green and luxury aren't words that seem to go together. But luxury brands offer a unique opportunity for working with new materials and processes and to influence culture in interesting ways. Imaginative, well-integrated and ecologically sound materials and processes can be used to create green luxury goods. This course explores modular nature of the language of luxury and defines the lexicon of green luxury. How can luxury brands influence new trends in the market or create personalized opportunities? How can we reframe the perception of what luxury is and reposition luxury grand attributes within a more responsible ecological mandate? How can modular design be implemented to create opportunities to partner with technologies (e.g., wearable technologies, sensors, and ubiquitous computing) to create new brand alliances? Through a cross-section of disciplines, we can integrate a knowledge base of materials and processes and engage in speculative form-making to create a new dialogue around the future of "green" luxury.

DSMBA604: Sustainability Studio (Graduate)
Instructors: Nathan Shedroff and Susan Gladwin
While sustainability is a theme throughout every course in the program, this studio focuses exclusively on developing solutions that directly affect financial, natural, and human capital, as well as the systems that govern them. The course takes an in-depth look at various frameworks and approaches to sustainable development, using both historical and contemporary examples. Throughout the semester, students use practical tools and techniques for identifying issues, developing solutions, troubleshooting problems, and measuring progress. A semesterlong project challenges students to apply sustainability skills to a refined solution; at the end of the semester, they present their results along with a sustainability analysis and implementation plan.

DSMBA618: Business Models and Stakeholders (Graduate)
Instructor: Noami Stanford
There is no "right" or "perfect" approach to organizing a business; different values, understandings, and cultures influence the shape a business takes. This course examines various business models and types of organizations, looking to both the past and the future. It studies the history of corporations and examines the financial, social, political, and environmental roles that corporations play. In addition, the course discusses effective for-profit, nonprofit, and hybrid structures, as well as the necessary and valuable role of governments, NGOs, and communities. Students learn the importance of addressing the needs of a growing variety of stakeholders in order to be successful in today's market. They also explore the similarities among effective organizations, regardless of their business structure or organizational philosophy.

DSMBA630: Ethics & Organizational Culture (Graduate)
Instructor: Sharon Green
In this course, students learn how to identify different cultures and values in organizations and in customer markets and explore how they as leaders can navigate these differences in order to create successful, meaningful, and respectful offerings. The course discusses how leaders can remain mindful of societal and organizational values as well as how they can manage shifting values to create more successful and effective organizations. Students explore how they can meld their personal values and strategies with those of their clients and companies in order to find "grand strategies" that satisfy all parties. The course also focuses on developing cultural awareness and using cultural intelligence tools in order to manage effectively.

FASHN312 Fash Design 3: Sustainability (Undergraduate)
Instructor: Lynda Grose
Every era has its own ethics and aesthetics. Aesthetics represent the way in which an historical period and the values it creates takes form. The perspective of a stustainable society has not yet 'taken form' and the aesthetics of sustainability has yet to be born. -Enzio Manzini What are the social and environmental ramifications of our design decisions, and how can we mitigate them through our ideas? Students use their skills as designers to develop creative solutions to technical challenges in moving our industry and oursleves toward sustainability. More specifically, in Fashion Design 3: Sustainability, students learn about the ecological crisis, the philosophies and methodologies of some eco design pioneers. Following this foundation, students then learn tools and methodologies for developing their own socio/eco design strategies for garments. Through a series of studio projects, students have the opportunity to test these methodologies and tools for themselves. Eco communication strategies and precticing eco design are also covered. Class time is structured on the instructor's lecture, presentations and videos, followed by supervised lab time for students to develop and practice the lessons covered. Guest speakers and field trips, as well as projects with nonprofit organizations reinforce the content of the course.

FASHN260 Sustainable Fashion Seminar (Undergraduate)
Instructor: Lynda Grose
What are the social, cultural and environmental ramifications of our design decisions, and how can we mitigate or leapfrog them through our ideas? What is the role of design in the current ecological crisis? Students use their skills as designers to develop creative solutions to technical challenges in moving our industry and our society towards sustainability. More specifically students will review the ecological crisis and how fashion/textiles contribute to this crisis. Emerging interdisciplinary eco philosophies and methodologies will be reviewed, and students will be encouraged to develop their own eco design strategies. The content of the lectures will be explored through a series of lectures and tools coupled with class exercises, in which students will have the opportunity to test these methodologies and tools for themselves. Eco communication strategies and practicing eco design will also be covered through the lectures. Class time is structured around class exercises and lectures with a studio project as a final. Relevant field trips guest speakers and videos are integrated throughout the semester. A reader is provided. By the end of the course, students will have built their own source guide covering research and design methodologies, resources. organizations, and companies which can be referenced when practicing eco design, and participated in a collaborative studio project giving form to new ideas which emerged form the class.

FURNT220 Recycle-Reinvent-Reupholster (Undergraduate)
Instructor: Ashley Eriksmoen
This studio will be held in conjunction with the the Green Building Resource Center for the City of Oakland. Students completely recreate existing upholstered furniture by reinventing the structures and covering them in "green" materials. Salvaged/used, traditional frames for chairs and larger seating are the starting point. Students redesign and rework the frames into original forms and learn how to apply the time-honored skills of traditional upholstery to create unique, ground-breaking, asymmetrical pieces that join eco-friendly with progressive design. Corporate sponsors provide "green" textiles to the class.

The semester ends with a public exhibition at the City of Oakland's Green Building Resource Center, where a number of the chairs will join the permanent collection. The class promotes reuse over consumption, showcases "green" fabrics, and exposes student designers to working with architects and the public.

INDUS232 IS: Product to Package (Undergraduate)
Instructors: Sue Redding & Tom Ingalls
This team-taught course is intended for Graphic Design and Industrial Design students. As individuals and as teams you consider products from conception to production to usage to ecological impact, ultimately designing both the three-dimensional forms and their two-dimensional labeling systems. We look at products as artifacts with the capacity for narrative, and not simply as objects. We explore materials, techniques, and systems of the product design world. Starting with understanding a design brief, clarifying what is "brand" and how branding affects a product and its appearance, students learn how to apply design across a system or product line.

Satellite Studios are Elective Studios within the Industrial Design Program that are also open to students in other majors. Satellite studios are taken in any order. Students may sign up for whichever studio best fits their schedules or interests.

INDUS232 IS: Energetics/Ecology Design (Undergraduate)
Instructor: Jay Baldwin
This intent of this course is to provide a background in the principles underlying the efficient and ecologically benign use of energy and resources essential for sustainable design. Comprehensive, anticipatory whole systems thinking will be stressed throughout. This is a lecture course which will include lecture, video, field trips, reading, and discussion.

INDUS316 Design & Culture (Undergraduate)
Instructors: Steve Holt & Mara Skov Holt
This course addresses current issues in design and analyzes their place in the context of art, politics, technology, the environment, and everyday material culture. The objective of the class is to enrich and expand our approach to studio-based practice, to appreciate the impact of cultural forces upon the work of designers, and hopefully to anticipate future trends. Throughout the course the class moves back and forth between theoretical writings and the analysis of the objects and arguments made by practicing designers today.

Satellite studios are elective studios within the Industrial Design Program that also are open to students in other majors. Satellite studios are taken in any order. Students may sign up for whichever studio best fits their schedules or interests.

INTER308 Materiality & Space 3 (Undergraduate)
Instructor: Wing Lee
This final sequential studio course in materiality focuses upon processes suggested by the distinct intention, application and detailing of materials themselves. Through a series of projects, creative uses and innovative combinations, a broad spectrum of materials are researched, design details considered, drawn and then built at full scale.

The course also highlights the evolving breadth of sustainable "green" building materials available on the market and research into the life cycle of spatial systems, building products and issues of recycling. And the students learn about the LEED certification process available for commercial design projects. The class focuses upon the role of designers assuming leadership positions in educating the public about the sustainability issues in the built environment. Through the realization of studio projects, the class advances model-making skills and refines aesthetic concerns through the implementation of a wide variety of materials.