In this course you will be given an opportunity to participate in a public discourse by shaping different possible futures and by that taking part in shaping the future. The course will train you to work with futuristic and visionary product concepts. Through innovative methods and processes you will be able to expand the conceptual possibilities in a certain project, accommodating different perspectives being relevant in shaping products for a sustainable future society.

We aim to enhance your ability to address practical design problems by a focus on solution conjectures and by encouraging you to discuss, design, write and ‘pitch’ your future-focused design proposals to specific audiences.

The course will suit motivated students that would like to have a say in both the way our society and design profession develops. The course is quit demanding involving practical design work, seminars, writing and reading. However it also gives a lot of freedom and provides a safe place for taking risks and asking the kind of difficult questions that usually lack obvious and straightforward answers.

The aim of the course is to develop your ability to become an innovative and strategic resource both in a commercial and public context. The competences we want to develop in this course are therefore rather oriented towards visions and solutions than to analytic and problem oriented skills.

At the end of the course, you will have developed your skills in:

o Being independently reflective and critically-constructive to a given design brief.

o Challenging for granted taken assumptions about the methods, cultures, purposes and boundaries of professional design.

o Challenging for granted taken assumptions about predominant trends, cultures, purpo¬ses, qualities, taboos and ethical issues in our contemporary and future society.

o Being able to develop thought-provoking, sustainable, innovative and visionary product proposals.

o Being able to communicate the proposals to specific audiences by e.g. exhibitions, talks, presentations, blogs and/or written essays.

The course structure is intended to be clear and simple. It has two parallel but interrelated streams, one more practical and one more theoretical:

o The more practical stream follows a seemingly familiar path, including a design brief, design work and presentation. However you will be challenged in your approaches and invited to be more radical, solution-driven, visionary, future oriented and thought provocative than usually is the case. This “invitation” will typically take place in seminars and/or group- or individual tutorials.

o The more theoretical stream also follows a seemingly familiar path; including lectures, reading and writing. However the content is expected to be more thoroughly challenged in regular seminars than usually is the case. In these compulsory seminars are you, as well as everyone else, expected to take an active part and by that developing an under¬standing of the praxis of theoretical work.

In the end of the course we expect some simple instances of concrete outcomes; (i) a physical product proposal, (ii) a written critical-constructive essay or a project proposal and (iii) a public exhibition. All instances (except the ‘project proposal’) should aim for public interference and debate.

The course will involve both individual and group work.

Assessment is through peer review, tutor appraisal, student self-evaluation and student-tutor consultation. The assessment may be both formal and informal. In discussions through seminars and tutorials, tutors and students will be able to assess learning in-process.

An external examiner will, together with the tutors, assess the final deliveries and give a written feedback.

The course is assessed as pass/fail, subject to the Regulations for Master's degree program at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, § 6-14.

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