Discourse on Design Studies

Level: Graduate

Division: Parsons The New School for Design

School: School of Art and Design History and Theory

Department: Art and Design History

Course Number: PGDS 5115

Course Format: Lecture

Location: NYC campus

Permission Required: No

Topics:

• Design History, Theory & Criticism
• Design
• Design Research

Description:
The study of design, in the modern sense, is of relatively recent origin. While we can trace back a lineage of thought around designing to the renaissance and earlier, in the modern sense reflection on design only begins from the middle of the C19th and does not acquire institutional depth until after 1945 and indeed many of the various trajectories and lines of research and inquiry that are opening up today through the increasing global interest in design studies and design research only date from the 1980s. In the context of this seminar, whose aim is to introduce students to the range and depth of design studies we will concentrate therefore on comparatively recent studies, contrasting these however with earlier reflections on design seen through the literature on craft, the decorative arts, architecture and drawing. The overall goal of the class is to be to give students sufficient context to the fields that now make up “design studies” such that they can begin to position themselves within the professional arena of design research and design thinking.

Course Pre/Co-requisites:
Open to: Masters degree in Design Studies majors only.

Restrictions:

Level

Not open to Undergraduate students.

Major

Open to Design Studies students.