Design for Sustainability and Visual Communication Design, teaching and research

[students click here for access to course materials]

Starting May 29, 2017.

This course explore bio-centered, regenerative and sustainable ways to approach the design process, through a combination of multiple methods, lectures, and experiential learning activities on an assigned subject.

After 3.8 billion years of evolution, all life that is today present (including ourselves) is the evidence of well adapted ‘design solutions’ for survival, while those ‘design solutions’ that did not work are the fossils we find today as evidence too. The concept of sustainability and design for sustainability (DfS) need to be attuned to a bio-centered process. Both design and sustainability must be framed in the context of a new understanding of systems and structures that rule the natural world, from which human society must be part of. Today biomimetic design (biomimicry) is an emerging discipline recognized as a leading methodology with the ability to drive environmentally sustainable innovation.

(illustration Pablo Lobato)