Sustainable Everyday Practices

Level: Undergraduate

Division: Parsons The New School for Design

School: School of Design Strategies

Department: Environmental Studies

Course Number: PSDS 3602

Course Format: Seminar

Location: NYC campus

Permission Required: No

Topics:

• Design Research
• Sustainability

Description:
Technological changes alone cannot sufficiently enhance societal sustainability— and even those technologies that do make notable contributions require significant social change to be successful. Promoting sustainability therefore involves sophisticated understandings of the motivations and habits of humans as well as clever and comprehensive ways of shifting people’s behaviors and expectations. This course will cover various techniques and strategies for fostering more sustainable everyday ways of living through a combined seminar and studio. In the seminar, the class will consider a range of theories and approaches addressing the complexities of socio­technical change in relation to sustainability and design. This includes literature from the interdisciplinary domains of design research, science and technology studies, industrial ecology, consumption studies and consumer culture theory, among others. In the studio, the class will integrate theoretical learning with a case project as a ‘living lab’, a design research framework oriented toward experimentation in the dynamic context of everyday life.

Course Pre/Co-requisites:
Open to: All university upper-level undergraduate degree students. Pre-requisite(s): PSDS 1601 Ecological Communication Design or equivalent highly recommended.

Restrictions:

Level

Open to Undergraduate students.