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SCHOOL OF SPECULATION
About our Guests:
SOS is a nomadic not-for-profit critical design school that seeks to ameliorate the state of higher education in Britain which has seen rising fees lead to vocational educational approaches in design subjects, with less and less attention given to critique. Running workshops, lectures, seminars and design residencies, the school without walls builds relationships between the latent centres of knowledge in our cities like museums and galleries to create a different kind of educational offer.
Since 2018, SOS has lectured nationally and internationally, hosting events at universities and other public institutions including the V&A London, Parsons New School, New York and the Design Museum. Co-founder Kishan San is a Researcher at Forensic Architecture managing most recently, the investigation of the Beirut Port Explosion. Co-founder Pierre Shaw is Associate Lecturer at LCC, UAL and Architect at Haworth Tompkins, London.
Image credit: ©
School of Speculation
About the Topic:
Increasingly, architectural and design education has become focused on vocational studies; equipping graduates for a career in maintaining the status quo. That is to say, without hyperbole, supporting a damaging carbon intensive industry of labour exploitation that all-too-happily feeds the constant development required in our cities for economic growth and capital accumulation. At university, students are mis-sold a narrative about design for the social good, but in truth the majority of our work goes on to fuel these very inequalities.
'There is no action without politics' (Hannah Arendt, 1958), and thus the agency to make change has to be with every designer. During this evening we will discuss the work of Critical Designers using the text of Peter Snowdon to explore the political potential in our work as designers and citizens. By cross examining the work of critical designers like Forensic Architecture and others, we will delve into the new and urgent direction needed in design education to make positive social change.
Image credit:
© Forensic Architecture
You can watch the discussion here:
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