School for Designing a Society

Social Change Courses

The City You Live In

The city you live in invites participants to reflect on various physical, social, organizational and even whimsical features that make the difference between a desirable and a miserable city. Research into encouraging city-scale experiments that have been enacted elsewhere, as well as ideas that have been or could be tried in our own neighborhood are compiled into a booklet and shared with policy makers at various levels.

Architecture of Participation

This course is an exploration into the social effects of spatial designs. Particularly the question of what kinds of designs might increase people's participation in the decisions that affect them, in their social environment, in their lives--this is the focus for speculation, investigation and experimentation. This could include room arrangements, playgrounds, housing, pubic squares, community gardens, transportation, and imaginary hybrids of these.

Teaching Teaching

To teach teachers teaching. Pre-requisite: participants want to, and intend to, teach. Students (teachers) are asked to make position statements regarding: teaching vs. learning; authority vs. authoritarian; instruction vs. orientation; what to avoid; how to educate wanting as well as knowing; retardation of decay, and how that influences learning; communication and "anticommunication", and how that influences teaching. Students (teachers) are asked, "If you don't agree that teaching is when someone does what you want, then, when is teaching?" As a response to that question, teachers (students) each give a presentation, something they "teach". The student is then responded to by the class of teachers.

Living Labs

A Living Lab at the School for Designing a Society is time of several days duration late in the session when the students are invited to design an intensive series of activities. The idea is to spend a set duration of time in each others' presence, to experiment with modes of interaction, presentation, and creation, to model ideas that design groups have formulated as components of a desired society.

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