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In the last year after writing my book, I spent a lot of time thinking about the #bauhaus and what it would look like today. Here’s what I would get students to experience to break the mould of design education as an enabler to capitalism and consumption:
First class: get a ‘smart’ object that is broken. You have technical support to open it but you need to find out what’s wrong on your own. Mechanical, electronics, software. You have to do the research on your own or ask ‘Masters’ for guidance.
Next: you visit local businesses and apply for work placements a few hours a week while you study. This is compulsory and the business must be local.
You build or maintain some of the shared infrastructure used by your student community. Agora space, library, supply shop, cafe.
You run a crowdfunding campaign for a collaborative product and deliver it while still in the program.
You spend a class designing paper posters ANd an online campaign. You compare their impact in your local community.
You spend a week sorting rubbish for a recycling centre.
And you get a lot of time to think, to look, to talk to each other. The wifi will be crap.
If anyone likes the sound of any of this, has some land somewhere with some defunct building in a rural area on a commuter line tona big city, it’s a lifelong dream that I’d love to try to work on.
I would call it The Low Carbon Design Institute.
And of course now it has a twitter account @Lo_C_D_I
