2024 Høst

Learn to work with complexity – using Systems Oriented Design

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 to policy design to sustainability transitions of 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.

We aim to work with two different tracks:

1. Focus on what happens before a building project get started, looking at the need in a bigger perspective, and understanding all the actors and their agendas in order to develop a desirable future and portfolio of interventions.
2. Focus on industrial design and take a broad look at sustainability by investigating economical and societal approaches to make ideas truly succeed in the market.

The two tracks will exchange learnings and discuss methods and mindset to maximize the learning.

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!

If you have done the “Introduction to SOD” in your 3rd year at AHO (Design) you will find that we in this course go deeper into SOD and adapting your thinking and skills in a different context.

We will pull in resources from our Executive Master SOD students and their network as “context navigators”. These are actors who have a deeper domain knowledge.

If you want more information look up the menu Projects/Master projects at the website https://systemsorienteddesign.net

Teachers on the course: Andreas Wettre, Abel Crawford, Jonathan Romm + external contributors

The PreDip course aims to help students to develop a solid launch pad for their diploma projects, one that will allow them to start their design/research process from a knowledgeable and critical position and with a clear plan.

The choice of theme is primarily in the hands of each student, and the direction in which this subject is to take is mainly the result of consultations between each student and their supervisor, the institute leader, and the course staff.

The course is organized in two main phases. The first phase focus both on the individual student’s own skills and interests and the choice of the actual theme of the project. This first phase will be presented and assessed at a midterm-presentation (after app. 1 month). The second phase deals with designing the actual project with a feasible project proposal as its main and final delivery.

The diploma at the Institute of Design is the final project in the Master programme. The Institute takes a broad approach to the design profession that includes products, services, systems and interactive experiences. The education brings together aesthetics and technology, creativity and design methods, culture and research. The programme has roots in Industrial Design, but today also includes Interaction Design, Service Design and Systems Oriented Design. This is reflected in the width of our students’ diplomas, and the broad range of themes that they address.

The diploma concludes our five-year Master in design and is done in the final semester. The diploma is a self-initiated and self-organised project that takes place over 18 weeks. The students develop and define their own project-descriptions (the diploma programme) in a pre-diploma’ course, in the semester leading up to the diploma. During the diploma project the students have a main supervisor at the Institute, but can also seek additional input and guidance form across AHO and externally. Diplomas are typically done as individual projects, but can also be done in groups.

The diplomas at the Institute of Design are characterised by variety and breadth. The diploma projects are typically initiated and developed by the students, and they are free to explore different themes and formats. These can be creative explorations, product development and theoretical projects, or collaborations with commercial companies, public services or researchprojects. Diplomas can also be discursive design projects that seek to raise questions or challenge societal or cultural issues. Often our diplomas are ‘hybrids’ that bring together different methods and actors, or span across our different design specialisations.

The purpose of the diploma is multi-layered. The students have to bring together what they have learned throughout their education to define and develop their own project. A challenge here is how the project is followed through, how it is developed and how it is executed as a design project. In the scope of the Master, the diploma is a relatively large project that demands that the student is self-driven, organised, structured and creative. At the same time, the diploma is a possibility for the student to explore his or her own identity as a designer, to research topics she or he finds interesting, or to challenge the students acquired skills and methods. The diplomas should therefore be understood holistically as projects where the students get to choose their own themes, approaches and processes, but where the challenge is also about organising and developing the project itself. Defining and developing the scope and plan for the project is done both in the project-description (diploma programme), as well as throughout the process.

It is important to note that in doing a holistic evaluation of the diplomas, the focus should be on the project itself rather than how closely it follows the initial description or diplomaprogramme.

In 1972, the French art critic and cultural philosopher Pierre Restany launched a call for the conversion of Mount Vesuvius into an international cultural park. Restany curated the call, inviting leading figures from the art world and design. It happened in the "Land art years," which “witnessed a shift from the object to the idea, from form to environment, and from work to gesture”.

Pierre Restany played a pivotal role in transitioning the art world towards a "new realism," which simultaneously critiqued radical abstraction, figuration, and what he called "Stalinist social realism”. Today, a new generation of designers are once more inclined to work directly with reality rather as opposed to meaning. This is a new generation of artists and designers aiming to address the environmental crisis informed by the emerging aesthetics arising from the reality of new scientific observations.

Given this cultural momentum, some of Restany's original propositions gain renewed relevance, as well as his peculiar fascination for the volcano as a powerful and mysterious landscape entity. The vulcano as a site, phenomenon, landscape, and state shifting matter, embodies a fertile force that keeps exposing humanity's fragility in vivid ways, while simultaneously showcasing its capacity to thrive and evolve in the face of potential extinction. Design cultures from regions at volcano’s foothills continue to offer valuable lessons on designing for a ground that can not be taken for granted, never static, where the same matter that composes buildings and landscapes can shift to become designed objects’ most powerful treat.

This studio aims to reenact Pier Restany's call for mount Vesuvius in different volcanic zones around the world. Architecture and landscape architecture students will propose projects in active volcanic zones relying on new knowledge unavailable to the original group of artists and designers convened by Restany. We will delve into a selection of the original visionary proposals, which include figures as disparate as Reuterswärd, Topolino, Enzo Mari, Alessi, Costa-Karahallos, Xenakis, Gruppo “Continuum”, Isozaki, Giannetto Bravi; while at the same time discuss specific volcanic phenomena (and its representations) to guide design. Restany’s manifesto for “new realism” will be a lateral guide, but we will also consider that not everything in his manifesto, or his friend’s ideas about the volcano, aged particularly well.

Proposals developed in the studio may be landscape architecture, buildings, parks, gardens, or ideally a combination of scales. Ten suggested programs are suggested as departure point for the cultural park. As in previous studios, collaboration between architecture and landscape architecture students is encouraged and highly detailed projects are expected.