Over the course of 5 months, I’ve learnt lessons that I hope to carry forward with me throughout the rest of my design journey. An absolute essential, Design Across Scales was an enriching course that managed to cover the most crucial topics, while complementing the rest of our foundation year courses—all of which, I think, complement each other—and truly altered my perception of design and what it stood for. Although I aspire to be a designer, I realise now that my knowledge of it was only the tip of an iceberg before this course—I still have a lot to learn, but Design Across Scales was, I believe, the best start to the long path I have ahead of me.
But for now, coming out of this course seems to have given me a new lens to look at the world through. I now recognise systems everywhere, it’s difficult not to. When something catches my attention, I find myself wondering how it was made, and recognise the fact that it was designed, crafted, and appreciate that fact. In some cases, I even find myself pointing out design flaws and feeling genuine annoyance (offence, even)—and wonder how I could’ve designed it differently, or if I could’ve done it better. This course truly changed the way I think, and I am grateful for that.
While all of the topics we learnt were relevant, the ones I enjoyed the most were biomimicry and systems thinking. Although I genuinely dislike biology and anything related to science, I found that I greatly enjoyed biomimicry—examples of projects based off of it and their implementations, I thought, were so clever and well thought out (like the office building inspired by a termite mound)—absolutely astounding. Systems, on the other hand, was something I’d never even given much thought to. They’d never even crossed my mind other than in middle school while learning about the nervous system within our body or the solar system way out there—but now I’m fascinated by the systems I seem to notice everywhere I go, and when I somehow find connections between different ones.
The reading I enjoyed the most was probably the review about the ‘Massive Change’ exhibition, although not with regard to design but because I enjoyed the writing style and content of the material itself, and couldn’t help but dissect it like we did other articles in high school. If prompted, I’d gladly do an entire commentary on the whole article!
The lecture covering the topic of convergence was one I found very interesting and was actually one of my top favourites, & I was quite engrossed in the discussion that took place during class— the concept of AI always fascinated me, and I love reading up about it occasionally. The ‘levels of convergence’ reading, however, was a little difficult to follow, and I found myself losing interest after the first few pages. And so I wouldn’t say the topic or the reading were irrelevant to the course—they most definitely weren’t—but in my opinion the reading was far too advanced for the level we’re at right now in foundation year.
Another comment I’d make would be about the topics regarding biomimicry and sustainability. While it remains one of my favourite topics, I also found it quite redundant. Of course, I understand it's importance and the impending need to switch to sustainable means of design, and the urgent need to promote awareness regarding it in order to ensure it’s effective implementation; However, I personally found that its repetition made it less interesting. On the whole, however, most of the readings proved beneficial to me and were easy enough to digest that I could treat them as a wind-down activity than an obligatory assignment.
This semester opened my eyes to the different ways I can operate as a designer, and to the endless opportunities that lie ahead of me. I still think it’s much too early to decide for sure the scales and disciplines I’d like to operate at, but as of right now I’m leaning towards working at the mezzo scale, and have a great interest in multimedia design. A part of me, however, wants to operate across different scales and disciplines, and explore all of my options before settling on one.
Image: Avila, G. Enlightenment. [image] available at: https://dribbble.com/shots/4498533-Enlightenment.
Accessed on: December 6 2020
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