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Introduction to Social Design

Home/ Introduction to Social Design
Course TypeCourse CodeNo. Of Credits
Foundation CoreNA4
  • Semester and Year Offered: Semester 1 (Monsoon)
  • Course Coordinator and Team: Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan
  • Email of course coordinator: suchitra@aud.ac.in
  • Pre-requisites: None
  • Aim:
  • To familiarise students with key global design movements and influential designers from the 19th century onwards
  • To make connections between the social-political-economic and the visual-material environment and the pathways of global influence
  • To explore primary visual-material sources on design in India
  • Course Outcomes:
  • On successful completion of this course students will be able to:
  • Appreciate the ways in which design and society shape each other and recognise this phenomenon in the world around them.
  • Identify the capabilities of a social designer to shape the world for social good.
  • Express this critical view of the interrelation between social forces and the designed environment in a well-reasoned argument in writing.
  • Successfully present their views in oral form and give and receive productive critiques from classmates.
  • Brief description of modules/ Main modules:
  • Module 1
  • Emergence of Design as a distinct practice
  • Design’s nineteenth-century antecedents in Europe as a product of the industrial revolution and the subsequent mutations would be introduced in this segment along with challenges to this origin-theory from older practices in South and East Asia.
  • Gandhi, Tagore and Coomaraswamy
  • The writings of these three thinkers greatly influenced ideas about art and craft in the early twentieth century and continued to have an influence for several decades. This segments looks at these thinkers in the context of the anti-imperial movement for political independence.
  • Independence and after
  • This segment would trace the contours of the imperatives for design after Independence and the ways in which it became implicated in the nation building process. The establishment of the first institutions for design education in India and its global-local lineages would be teased out.
  • Design in contemporary India
  • The concluding segment would look at design dynamics in globalized India along with the challenges posed by technologies such as internet, cellphone as well as emerging social landscapes of connectivity.
  • Module 2
  • This module will expose students to design as a social act primarily through case examples in varied design domains (both built as well as virtual) across multiple geographic and historic settings.
  • Projects will be selected from India, South-east Asia, Latin America, Africa and other parts of the globe. Through case studies from varied design disciplines this module will attempt to trace the history of social design and highlight overlaps and differences in relation to parallel streams of social innovation, social enterprise, design for social change etc., bringing forth nuanced aspects of Social Design as a discipline.
  • Module 3
  • This module will be an introduction to sociological concepts such as multi-layered Social Structure, Social Stratification and Class, Social Exclusion, Poverty and Welfare, Social Interaction and everyday life. It will try to connect social theories with design through issues related to our societies within the present day context. This module would invite students to relate the case studies and ideas presented in the earlier modules to sociological concepts to consolidate their understanding of design’s relationship and entanglement with the social world. This concluding module will build towards the Idea of Intersectionality in the next semester.
  • Social Structure, Social Stratification and Class
  • Social Exclusion, Poverty and Welfare
  • Social Interaction and everyday life
  • Film Screening: ‘Social Network’ discussing the complexity of ‘social’
  • Assessment Details with weights:
  • The final grade would be composed of the following:
  • Class participation, discussions, articulation and enthusiasm for unfamiliar material: 20%
  • Response papers: 20%
  • Group Seminar: 20%
  • Research paper: 20%
  • Cumulative Performance Evaluation: 20%
  • Reading List:
  • Module 1
  • Marx, Karl (1867). Commodity. Available at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/commodity.htm
  • Morris, William Morris (1889). Arts and Crafts of Today. Available at https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1889/today.htm
  • Coomaraswamy, AK (1910). Swadeshi True & False. Available at http://www.swaraj.org/swadeshi.htm
  • Flusser, Vilem (1995). About the word Design. Design Issues Vol. 11, No. 3 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 50-53 (4 pages)
  • Eames, Charles (1958). India Report, Ahmedabad: National Institute of Design.
  • Balasubrahmanyan, Suchitra(2016). Indian Design. Available at https://www.bloomsburydesignlibrary.com/encyclopedia-chapter?docid=b-9781472596161&tocid=b-9781472596161-BED-I027&st=
  • Module 2
  • Keim, Matt (2011). Designing the Social, Design Philosophy Papers, Volume 9, Issue 3. p 207-216.
  • Antonelli, Paola (2012). States of design 10: Social Design, Domus Online, Available at
  • https://www.domusweb.it/en/design/2012/02/.../states-of-design-10-social-design.html
  • Balasubrahmanyan, Suchitra (1995) Dandi March as Communication Strategy.
  • Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 30, No. 14 (Apr. 8, 1995), pp. 743-746.
  • Balasubrahmanyan, Suchitra (2016) Imagining the Indian Nation Imagining the Indian Nation: The Design of Gandhi’s Dandi March and Nehru’s Republic Day Parade. Chapter in Designing Worlds:National Design Histories in the Age of Globalization, (Grace Lees-Mafei and KjetelFallan eds.), New York: Berghahn Books. 108-124
  • Module 3
  • Rittel, Horst and Melvin Webber (1973). Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning Policy Sciences, 4:2 (1973:June) p.155-169
  • Shove,Elizabeth, Matt Watson John Ingram (2005) The value of design and the design of value Paper read at Joining Forces conference, University of Helsinki, September 22-24.
  • Moles, A.A. and David W. Jacobus(1988)Design and Immateriality What of It in a Post Industrial Society?Design IssuesVol. 4, No. 1/2, Designing the Immaterial Society, pp. 25-32
  • Bardzell,J &Bardzell, S (2013) What is ‘critical’ about Critical Design CHI 2013 World conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems April 27-May 2, 2-13, New York: ACM
  • Balasubrahmanyan, Suchitra(2018) Craft and Design and the Hindu Way of Life Article in Encyclopaedia of Asian Design Vol. 4: Transnational and Global Issues in Asian Design, Christine Guth (Volume editor), Hilary French and Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan (Thematic editors), London: Bloomsbury Academic.Available online at https://www.bloomsburydesignlibrary.com/encyclopedia-chapter?docid=b-9781350066021&tocid=b-9781350066021-EAD-4-SECT2-001&pdfid=9781350066021-EAD-4-SECT2-001.pdf