TAD2502*

Product analysis forum

6 points - 2-hour seminar and 10 independent study hours per week - Second semester - Caulfield - Prerequisites: TAD1101 and TAD1102 - Core for BDes(IndDes) and BID

Objectives On completion of this subject, students should be able to approach existing designs with a critical sense of the social and aesthetic value of any given consumer good; discern symbolic associations in products and express links between their design and a historical vocabulary of images and metaphors which operate in traditional interpretations of such objects; support their intuitive opinions - either in favour of a design or against it - with reasoned argument and to engage the language of criticism in debating the sense or the vanity of certain products; enjoy the imaginative task of describing the situations in which a given product would be used in household in analytical ways which reveal its strengths and weaknesses; project discriminating judgements with a sense of critical rigour which explores and challenges the existence of the principles of design; feel comfortable with iconoclastic views of design classics wherever a coherent or poetic reason for disapproval seems justified.

Synopsis A series of talks by the lecturer is followed by presentations of objects and debate or group discussion concerning the merits of the designs. The criteria by which the objects are judged allow the student to consider critically the moral dichotomies of judgement in design, such as practicality/impracticality, social use/private folly, labour-saving/unnecessary consumption, luxury/environmental nuisance.

Assessment Two seminar papers : 40% and 60% respectively

Prescribed texts

Barthes R Mythologies Granada, 1973
Dormer P The meanings of modern design Thames and Hudson, 1991
Forty A Objects of desire Thames and Hudson, 1986
Papanek V The green imperative: Ecology and ethics in design and architecture Thames and Hudson, 1995
Shields R Lifestyle shopping: The subject of consumption Routledge, 1992

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