Julia Lohmann is a Professor of Practice in Contemporary Design. She investigates and critiques the ethical and material value systems underpinning our relationship with flora and fauna. Julia's research interests include critical practice and transition-design, bio materials, collaborative making, museums and residencies, embodied cognition and practice as research. As designer in residence at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2013, she established the Department of Seaweed, an interdisciplinary community of practice exploring the marine plant's potential as a design material. She holds a PhD in Innovation Design Engineering from the Royal College of Art, London.
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As biomaterial is a broad and currently widely used term, the students learn to explore and discover new perspectives to biomaterials within their systems and understand how to create their own creative approach towards these materials.
This 6 week long reflective practices course introduces critical and reflective approaches to design, which we consider to be an evolving, political and activist field. We look at different practices of critical design including speculative design, transition design, design activism and their theoretical and historical foundations. We also discuss how to use our agency as designers in line with our values and learn to incorporate new reflective practices into our work.
The course introduces students to design as a social practice. Students will be asked to address a real concern in a real community context, by generating and responding to one or a number of real life briefs in that chosen community.
MUO-E5027
Critical Design Practices is an MA level course that was run from 2018-2020 by programmes Contemporary Design and Fashion and Collection Design. It has been replaced by the course 'Reflective Practices' in 2020.
