CRITICAL DESIGN WORKSHOP #1
Welcome to the first critical design workshop here at Double Union!
What is criticality?
The word ‘critical’ might have negative connotations. However, we are more interested in framing it positively and using it productively.
What is Design?
Most of the of the design that has been created under the banner of critical design is has been materialized through graphic design, architecture, industrial design, or design inspired by scientific innovation in fields like genetics or synthetic biology.
What is critical design?
Like others who have done definitional work around critical design, we see critical design as the work of intervening, extending or responding to the built environment.
What is criticality? According to us.
Critical design, despite the potentially negative connotations due to its name, is explained by its practitioners through generally optimistic terms. Rather than meaning to belittle or disapprove, being critical here means to reexamine or analyze the present state of affairs within the domain of study. “The critical sensibility, at its most basic, is simply about not taking things for granted, to question and look beneath the surface [1].” The designed things that are created in critical design are about creating “testimonials to what could be” or “[alternatives] to how things are [2].”
- DUNNE & RABY, Interpretation, Collaboration, and Critique
- DUNNE & RABY, Speculative Everything, p. 35
What is design? How can we make it work for us?
Most of the of the design that has been created under the banner of critical design has been materialized through graphic design, architecture, industrial design, technology design, or design inspired by scientific innovation in fields like genetics or synthetic biology. There has been less attention given to other forms of design like service design or fashion design. In this way, there is a clear opportunity to expand critical design by exploring these different modes of output.
What is critical design? To others? To you?
We conceptualize critical design as the work of intervening, extending or responding to the built environment with the aim of understanding how values get embedded, how design decisions become normalized, and what design potentials exist (for the present, past, or future).
See also DUNNE & RABY and writings by the Bardzells
About the project
Critical Design + Feminist Hackerspaces is an ongoing project faciliated by researchers in Tactile and Tactical (TAT) Design Laboratory at the University of Washtington. For more information about the project, contact Daniela Rosner.