Planetary Course Syllabus
This is a course description for a studio course offered in the Fall 2023 semester at the Rhode Island School of Design, and aimed primarily at Industrial Design, Architecture, and Graphic Design students. The central goal of the course is to challenge students to rethink the very fabric of design ethics and principles in the face of our planet's most pressing crises. Drawing from over two years of global research, the course delves into the complexities of creating a “manual” for navigating the Anthropocene, and invites students to prototype new formats, question existing paradigms, and apply design thinking to systemic and planetary contexts. Open to Industrial Design students and the wider RISD community, this course is not just a class; it’s a call to action.
Course Description
How can emerging knowledge about how to best address global crises be stabilized and shared? What tools do people working on these problems need to help them apply better frameworks, principles, and approaches in their work?
Center for Complexity has recently completed over two years of research with partners around the world to develop a body of work aimed at helping current and future generations navigate the Polycrisis.
Our funders have asked us to format this work into a “manual” and we have completed a first draft. But big questions remain: is a manual the best tool to convey or disseminate this information? Is a manual a useful design constraint when the challenges of the Anthropocene are non-linear, emergent, entangled, and unbounded? How do instructions, design principles, and protocols operate in an era of AI?
Our early results suggest a design ethics with themes like: NO EXTERNALITIES // STEWARDING LOSS // NO NORMAL / NO CRISIS // SPEED = JUSTICE
This course is for students interested in applying the practices of design to planetary and systemic contexts. The course is open to students in Industrial Design and across RISD.
Learning Objectives
This course will interrogate the manual as an object of design for human knowledge production and transmission. Students will:
- prototype formats, experiences, and outputs while questioning and testing the contents
- interrogate and articulate their own standards for design
- move between conceptual and technical approaches to planetary challenges
- apply design approaches to systems
Instructors
Justin W. Cook is the Founding Director of the Center for Complexity. He is a strategic designer working on the world’s most challenging problem sets, such as healthcare, sustainability and education. His passion is to tackle these systems challenges by designing innovative organizational architectures.
Tim Maly is a Senior Lead at the Center for Complexity. Tim is working on designing institutions suitable for managing existential threats and providing care beyond stigma. A writer and critical designer, Tim has taught in the Masters of Industrial Design program at RISD, helping students understand the role that communication plays in explaining and exploring ideas. Tim has a background in game design and journalism.