Start semester
70 504 Systems Oriented Design: “Design for Very Complex System“
Passed foundation level (BA-level) courses at AHO in design or architecture or equivalent, 180 ECTS.
The course is suitable for all programmes; design, architecture, urbanism and landscape architecture students.
Learn to design for improving the society – using Systems Oriented Design
For dealing with the complexity and uncertainty of complex contexts of interconnected social and ecological problems, a systems approach is needed to enhance the ability of the designer to design solutions that address the underlying drivers of the socio-ecological crises. This systems approach will empower students with the ability to rapidly learn and understand the complexity of the context to find the most effective places in the system to design interventions that are relevant to addressing the problems. The SOD methodology is applicable in any context and scale, from sustainable product design, better healthcare services, to policy design to sustainability transitions of communities and society at large. An essential part of SOD is to use design skills to visualize complexity.
The methodology can also be used within a spatial framework, where one can focus on the spaces and places of a system as the drivers of the design project. Through the application of SOD to the fields of landscape architecture and architecture the course poses a challenge of expanding student’s work to address their spatial interests at a systematic context with a cross-scalar and transdisciplinary lens.
This SOD fall masters course invites you to get on the dance floor and jointly explore and play with ideas that are rooted in systems thinking and design doing. Through hands-on approaches and tools, you'll be able to take a systemic perspective to nurture your design practice to create things that are relevant to the complex world at different scales, from products to services to experiences to sustainability transitions of entire systems. It will allow you to learn how to use the toolbox of your own field, design, architecture, or landscape architecture and expand it to a systematic level. If you are a curious person who likes to puzzle and have fun with exploring a context broadly and figure out what would be relevant to design to make systemic impacts, you have found the right course for you!
Structure of the course:
This course contains three modules (after a first introduction to SOD methodology)
Module 1 (8 ETCS): Regenerative Systems Design (through immersion in Alpine-Urban reality)
Why the mountain context for learning about SOD? Mountain regions are complex social-ecological systems, vulnerable to global environmental and economic changes, often dependent on single industry sectors like tourism, forestry, or mining. They are prime cases for us to consider how we can design a more resilient, regenerative communities, ecologies and economies.
Module 2 (8 ETCS) Design for local Democracy (Based on module 1, design intervention to enhance local democracy)
You will work on how to transform societies at both local and global scales by orienting business and public sector to deliver on sustainability through enhancing democracy (bottom-up influencing) and innovating governance systems (facilitating top-down structures). Further course foci may feed from Governance Innovation relating with Economic Governance and the implementation of a circular economy on a bio-regional scale.
Module 3 (8 ETCS) Design for Action
It is one thing to figure out your intervention concepts, it is another to implement these concepts into the complex reality. The challenges and complexities of implementation often substantially outweigh the efforts of developing your design.
This module focuses on how to take your design from concept to reality utilizing SOD and other approaches like Change Management, Transition Design and Action Research, or Real-World Laboratory research, to prototype, iterate and implement the concepts developed in module 1 and 2
In all modules you will develop your Rich Design Space
Between each module there is a short period for reflection, digestion and self-programmed reading.
If you want more information look up the menu Projects/Master projects at the website https://systemsorienteddesign.net
Other teachers on the course: Haley Fitzpatrick, Birger Sevaldson, Abel Crawford, Jonathan Romm
Students will be introduced to System Oriented Design (SOD) as a method and approach, to:
- Develop a sensibility for systems, relationships and consequences: cause and effect, to think of how systems are embedded within different domains and different scales
- Visualize complexity, and using these visualizations as a tool to understand and find interventions to improve the systems
- Deal with uncertainty through unfolding and understanding complexity while working with “problematiques” (multiple interlinked problems)
- Anticipate futures through developing an ability to understand and consider multiple future scenarios and evaluate the possible, probable and desirable, developing both individual and participatory visions of the future.
- Anticipate thresholds for implementation and impacts of designed solutions.
- Rich design space for working with interventions in complex problematiques
- Critically think and self-reflect through considering questioning the norms, values influencing the opinions, behavior and decisions of yourself and the stakeholders they are designing for.
- Considering your role as a designer and citizen in the local community and global society.
- Navigate sustainability by being exposed to the state of the world and guiding design criteria for sustainability Regenerative, Resilient, Circular, Cross-scale design through a critical lens
Skills: The ability to apply the knowledge to solve problems and tasks. There are different types of skills – cognitive, practical, creative and communicative.
Students will acquire skills in:
- SOD as process-led methodology
- Visualizing complexity and utilizing Rich Design Space
- Research by design methodology
- Systems Thinking
- Sustainability Science
- Ecological Thinking
- Critical Thinking
- Dealing with uncertainty
- Collaboration through interdisciplinary problem solving in groups
- Visioning
- Design Implementation plans
- Workshop facilitation
General competence: to be able to apply the knowledge and skills mentioned above iin an ndependent manner- in situation that shows skills in being cooperative, responsible, reflective and being able to think critically in education and professional life.
Students will be able to use SOD methodology to understand and tackle complex problems and to think systemically.
Holistic perspectives, ethics and sustainability as well as cultural, organizational, economic and technical considerations are central to the Systems oriented designer.
These perspectives and the ability to have the project overview is a very good competence for a designer in a team, and also excellent proficiency for a project leader.
Systems-oriented designers can play a decisive role in managing complexity in future societal developments. Systems-oriented designers typically can work in design consultancies, in organizations, in municipalities with service design, on policy level, in the private sector to give some examples.
Systems-oriented designers are trained in techniques such as Gigamapping.
The systems-oriented designer is also a skilled workshop facilitator and leader of co-design processes.
Module 1 will involve you working in teams, partly independent, partly outdoors and in Hemsedal.
Module 2 and 3 will see you work on a chosen focus context according to the main themes or your chosen self-programmed theme. Projects for Module 2 and 3 can be individual or in groups. Group projects are recommended.
In all modules you will develop your Rich Design Space.
Project plans are created for each project individually according to the demands. Each project requires, in principle, its own project design. The course itself is a dynamic social system that must be adjusted and tweaked in real time.
A reading list will come.
| Form of assessment | Grouping | Grading scale | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portfolio assessment (Vurderingsmappe) | - | Pass / fail | The students are evaluated on the basis of participation and effort, milestone reviews, assessment and final project delivery. All three modules must be passed in order to pass the course. Module 1 – Circular systems gigamap, walkthrough presentation/video to communicate how Hemsedal as a community, ecology and economy can transform from its unsustainable status quo today, to a pioneering sustainable system in the future. Module 2 – Storyboard gigamap, walkthrough presentation/video and chapter contributions to final report with emphasis on leverage points and developed concepts. Module 3 – Iterated storyboard gigamap, and iterated walkthrough presentation/video with extra focus on implementation and action. Final report including chapters from previous modules. Final delivery: Report - The report is the main delivery. Final storyboard gigamap (digital and walkthrough video) - that easily communicate the project for the AHO Works Exhibition and sensors. All project material is to be digitally submitted to an online assignment system. The project report and gigamaps are to be presented to the sensors. |
| Workload activity | Comment |
|---|---|
| Attendance | Students are expected to attend all lectures, tutorials and presentations. |