COURSE DESCRIPTION:
Emphasis: Sustainability, Closed Loop Systems, Retooling Everyday Life
Sustainable futures depend on the design and business practices of the present. In this course we will focus on retooling our lives by designing products, services or environments with circular systems in mind. We will be intentional about how by-products of the making and disposing phases can fuel the creation of new value—also known as closing the loop. By adopting the circular economy ethos, we can imagine new design outcomes, new employment activity and other societal benefits while keeping materials in use and mitigating stress on natural systems.
In the first few weeks of the semester, teams will locate unmet needs from a problem-based discovery process and build several ideas based on that foundation. During the concepting and development phase, we will be creative parts-to-whole people, delineating a closed-loop process. Teams will be coached on how to prototype their ideas and learn how to effectively communicate their final closed-loop proposals.
