Class Research Seminar

Critical practice asks what design does, why and how - and, more urgently, what a designer can still do from within a discipline that is simultaneously complicit and generative of futures. Building on the theoretical grounding of critical reflexivity, this Research Seminar provides students of a forum to think critically about visual culture. Taking Jan van Toorn's committed, dialectical image-making and Ramia Mazé's articulation of design as a political and epistemic practice as anchoring references, the seminar treats research as a form-giving activity. Its central proposition is that the visual essay-as a hybrid form combining argument, image, and material voice. The seminar functions as a research space in which students develop and materialise a personal critical position ahead of the MA's final project/thesis phase.

Not applicable

    *    Critical practice as authored position From van Toorn's committed image to Mazé's design-as-inquiry: models of the designer as critical author and as researcher. Positioning, voice, and the politics of authorship in design research.     *    The visual essay as research method History, structure, and conventions of the visual essay across design, art writing, and cultural studies. Image-argument relations; sequencing, montage, and citation as critical devices; case studies of exemplary visual essays.     *    Constructing the research seminar project Iterative development of each student's critical practice project: research question, source material, visual/textual argument, and public presentation. Peer critique as method.

    *    Studio-seminar hybrid format: theoretical discussion paired with hands-on visual-essay production sessions.     *    Rolling peer-review structure, in which students critique each other's evolving visual essays as primary research artefacts.

Bennett, A. (Ed.). (2006). Design studies: Theory and research in graphic design. Princeton Architectural Press. Ericson, M., & Mazé, R. (Eds.). (2011). Design Act: Socially and politically engaged design today-Critical roles and emerging tactics. Sternberg Press / Iaspis. Garutti, F. (Ed.). (2019). Our happy life: Architecture and well-being in the age of emotional capitalism. Sternberg Press; Canadian Centre for Architecture.