DESGN614 GE: Green Luxury

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 re-frame 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.