Abstract

Lichtblau! ...
Designing between Postmodern Pluralism and Values

Combining theory and practical experience is a continuous challenge in higher education. Although teachers of design projects usually do have a high standard of theoretical knowledge themselves, working at the projects the focus very often shifts to “more simple“ design problems while advanced theoretical questions tend to be ignored.

The project “Lightblue! ...“ has combined several successive short–term–projects under one guiding topic. In the first place it was a classic design project but, in order to integrate theory best, the tasks were created in reverse order: A number of contents was chosen (methods, process, theory, designing) and the design tasks were planned to fit these contents. The intention of the guiding topic was to discuss what kind of values can be found in the field of design nowadays. Are there any general/traditional values or merely a huge amount of individual values? Does pluralism mean the opposite of values? ...

The students should be forced to develop their own opinions about the meaning of values. Eventually they will have to decide whether they want to adopt somebody else´s values or if they want to be the ones to define values themselves.

Vollständige Veröffentlichung: raap_icsid1.pdf (456 KB)