PROPOSAL FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A
BACHELORS OF DESIGN
IN
ECO-EFFICIENT MITIGATIVE DESIGN
Authored by
Shazia Umbreen Mirza
Course 1. Introduction To The Features Of Earth And Its Atmosphere
The objective is to introduce student to the physical features of our planet, the forces and systems of nature, and how these keep changing the physiology of Earth. The aim is to introduce students to the complex natural atmosphere or earth, so that she can later understand the nature and intensity of human intervention and its impacts on earth’s crust, water systems, and atmosphere.
Course 2. Tools For Problem Solving
The objective is to enable students to recognize, isolate and break down a complex problem into smaller, simpler and more manageable sub-problems.
Students will be given tools and systems through which solutions may be devised for presented problems. In addition to the systems, students will be emotionally trained to trust and use her personal reflective capabilities to understand problems in their unique context, instead of using standard fit-for-all formulae. Since the class is being trained to solve problems in groups (for communities), students will be exposed to systems and strategies that allow inclusion of significant community members into the process of problem solving alongside him/herself.
Course 3. Ethics Of Common Life
The objective is to teach students what it means to live in harmony with oneself and others by exposing them to various rules and paradigms of ethics at every level of human connection. The course aims at creating an urge within the student’s mind to build and culture a mindful community around her.
Course 4. Studio Skill 1
The objective is to let student choose any studio course being offered at XYZ and build practical aesthetic judgments and skills. Student can freely form his own trail of simple or complex studio skills by choosing any studio course from departments of musicology, film, architecture, fine arts and design. Student may take a theory course from department of cultural studies upon prior permission of her H.O.D who will just examine if taking this course does not undermine the degree requirement of theory-to-studio required ratio.
Course 5. Helpful Organisms and Microorganisms
The objective is to give students a perspective of healthy ecologies from a non-human-centric angle. The aim is to expose students to life forms that contribute towards our health, bodily functions and environmental balance without being noticed. The objective also is to give students an introductory information about biotechnological interventions for benefit of mankind
Course 6.Ecologies we Share
The objective is to enable students to understand the interconnected and interdependent systems through which different life forms coexist on our planet, basic type of connected but largely independent ecologies within different terrestrial, oceanic, river species. The aim is to enable students to understand in breadth the various interconnected and interdependent ecological systems on earth, how many ecologies humans are members of, how human intervention misbalances and damages an ecological system, and the intensity of human-caused damage
Course 7. Resilience Through Design
The objective is to give students an insight into latest scholarship about lifecycles of user-products from economic, management and design angle, and into strategic guidelines to live within environmental means. Very simply, resilience means not depending on the most perfect option for survival, and making use of available resources to their best.
Resilience means investing on systems that support growth of friendly forces, instead of strengthening forces that are unnecessarily destructive to life forms or the planet. To achieve universal design solutions, manufacturers today design for a worst-case scenario, using maximum potencies where a weak potency may do the task well. There is a common saying from industrial revolution times, “If brute force doesn't work, you're not using enough of it. "The course aims to expose these fallacies to students by brief discussions and practical observation and research in studio.
Course 8. Practical Horticulture
Students will be taught basic science and basic applied systems of aesthetic and functional horticulture, mostly aiming at permaculture, through assignments and projects in real-life situations.
Course 9. Studio Skill 2
Course 10. Taking Action As A Citizen
The objective is to educate students in effective ways of taking action for common good in a common citizen’s capacity. The aim is to equip students with basic but tested methodologies to design, plan and initiate citizen-led-action projects responding to environment issues, and to teach students how to draft a basic business proposal
Course 11. Human Damage To The Environment
The objective is to educate student about all the ways human intervention has damaged environment, and to Inform of the major environmental pollutants. The aim is to educate students will major laws and policies formed to regulate human behavior towards environment
Course 12. Studio Skill 3
Course 13. Urban horticulture
Course 14. Cradle To Cradle Design
The objective of this course is to teach basics of user-product design in context of today’s realities. Student will be taught how to evaluate different features of existing user-products or simple user-systems according to the meters of sustainability, safety and efficiency. Students will be guided to find and apply interventions or corrections at model stage that may extend a product life cycle in eco-safer ways.
Course 15. Family, Nourishment and Culture
The objective is to enable student to discover the true strengths of family units, community units and individuals and find out ways of utilizing these strengths.
Course 16. Industrial Materials
The objective is to Introduce students to all the categories and types of industrial materials. The aim is to teach students to identify major materials from the vast web of natural and man-made materials used in industrial products in Pakistani context
One important objective is to enable student to understand the ways in which a material is recycled into more materials or products, or gets disposed off, and also to see the real cost of a user product which requires many materials to form. Enable student to see the life cycle of user products right from acquisition of raw material, to processing, manufacturing, use and afterlife of a product at the point of disposal
Course 17. Collective Solutions
The objective is to put student and student groups in a real life situational problems where they are required to take responsibility of initiating a solution. The aim is to make student apply leadership knowledge learned in previous classes (through course work-book) to make up teams as team leader and test her learning as two levels,1,as part of a team under a team leader, and 2,as team lead.
Course 18. Negotiating Mutual Benefits
The objective is to teach students step-by-step tools of conducting a fruitful bargaining conversation.
Course 19. Waste Management
The objective is to introduce students to the current scholarship about the nature, production and disposal of urban waste from angles of economy, governance, health and sociology.
Course 20. The Upcycle Design
This course is designed as an advanced level of “Cradle to Cradle Design” course. As student already have learned the circular approach to energy and product use, the course aims to take the same learning to a higher level by teaching students in studio how products may be made to give user more benefit than the amount of natural resources borrowed from nature.
Students will be taught the strategies of Upcycle design systematically, through a small textbook The Upcycle by William McDonough and Michael Braungart.
Course 21. Hash tag: ResilientPakistan
The objective is to enable student to explore and refine her thesis probe through literature review. Let student organize her literature review and research in a way that it also becomes an online source of information for common citizen and future researchers. Teach students to write reasonable blog posts aimed at common Pakistani citizen
Course 22. Leading A Community
The objective is to equip students will basic tools required to lead a small community in an organized way. Enable student to become behaviorally balanced, poised and responsible. Teach student all the rules to compile and run a balanced team, and make it work effectively. Teach students how to start building a supportive contact list of people with various expertise and qualities
Course 23. Studio Skill 4
Course 24. Collective Solutions Studio 2
The objective is to allow students to learn that forming good groups and organized thinking together brings about better solutions, and enable them to increase their individual intelligence by working in group and learning for other’s strategies and failures. Lead students to put all the tools of problem solving that they learned to real practice.
Course 25. Aesthetics Of Environment
The objective is to educate students to see, identify and appreciate beauty of everyday life and surroundings. Show students that aesthetics can be taken as a meter of balance, harmony and poise in life. Show students that ethics of life are soundly connected with aesthetics of life, and action and experience both can be judged on an aesthetic meter
Course 26. Survey Of Contemporary Thinking At XYZ
The objective is to allow students to understand the basic question, queries, curiosities and problems that all final year students solve or take up in their biggest project. Let students observe and analyze the systems and paths of a proposed solution. Enable students to thoroughly understand the critical debates, contemporary issues and unsearched areas of different art and design fields. Allow students to discover the mandate and boundaries of each art and design field. Encourage students to connect with future professionals of all specialized fields taught at XYZ
Course 27. Business And Politics Of Food
The objective is to educate students with basic dynamics of global food production system, and teach them to identify the cause and effect relationship amongst different actors and factors in global food production system
Course 28. Collective Solutions Studio 3 (Thesis Project)
