DESGN614 GE: Design in the Unconscious

This class seeks to identify the role of the unconscious in design, scrutinizing the dominant terms for evaluating a design's success, form and function, as equally prone to unconscious forces. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the ways in which meaning and value become associated within a broad spectrum of design practices - including industrial and graphic design, architecture, film and photography, writing and speech. Our approach will be guided by close readings of seminal texts in psychoanalysis, linguistics, and cultural criticism. In distilling models of meaning-construction in dreams and poetry, we will attempt to lay groundwork for applications of these models in design practice: 1) how, technically, might the unconscious operate in a design process? and 2) why might a design succeed or fail at the level of the unconscious? A successful student in this class will, by the end of the semester, demonstrate an understanding of the psychoanalytic notion of the unconscious within the context of his/her and others' designs. The work of this class should further record a transformation of the student's role - as designer - in directing and (re-) manifesting culturally unconscious forces and images.