Index
Industrial Design - Current research projects
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Masters
Vendy Oliver, Master of Design (Industrial Design)
After the Tsunami: A project on Design action in Banda Aceh
Design has had ideas that it has the skill to help with better product and services in live. Can design help in the event of a disaster? If so what does it takes? This question has set me off to Banda Aceh to live and work there. This project also seeks to define the role of design/er in a disaster; for prevention, immediate response, and restoration.
Aceh is a difficult area to work in because of its heated and complex political situation. The Boxing day tsunami on 2004 somehow opened the international floodgate to this restricted zone and made this place accessible to everyone, which has make Aceh as one of the largest development projects ever with a $13.6 Billion funding commitment. I left Melbourne in search for what design could do in Aceh - with an expectation to start a community design project. In the end I did get to do many things - but the one thing that I went to Aceh for.
PhD
Anthea van Kopplen,PhD (Fashion)
SUPERMODERNGORGEOUS! A Designer’s Interpretation of sustainable fashiondesign practice
Supermoderngorgeous is a PhD by Thesis. The research explores the nature of sustainable fashion design practice. Querying a model of environmentally sustainable fashion design. The study uses reflective design practice informed by ethnography to explore the results of several design experiments. For each experiment the underpinning principle is that design is at the centre of practice in sustainable design. The experiments were divided into three studios: an exhibition, teaching practice and the researcher’s design practice. As well as the thesis, a capsule collection of fashion objects demonstrates the researcher’s interpretation of sustainable fashion design practice.
QuassimSaad, PhD (Industrial Design)
Restructuring and Design; Conceptual model
Academic studies and analyses of policy continue to indicate clear correlations between design discourse and economic development. This relationship is affirmed through many examples from developed nations as well as emerging attempts from a few developing states. The majority of these existing and proposed policies aim to provide strategic direction: their focus is on promoting ‘design’ as effective competitive factor, conveying a message that is relevant to corporations as well as political policy makers, and targets both audiences at the local and international levels. The link between economic development and design has a bearing if we turn our thoughts to Iraq, and the urgent restructuring needs it faces following the dramatic periods of war from 1980s to now. War has resulted in mass-scale damages to both the country’s social systems and its infrastructure. Images in media reports show the difficult, miserable and unsafe situations associated with today’s Iraqis’ daily lives. Current problems in Iraq are comprehensive and complex, and have been described as “unstructured problems…they cannot be explicitly stated without oversimplifying them” (Banathy, 1996, p. 27).
The nature of these “unstructured problems” is much wider than the context of economic development, however. The legacy of prolonged war has been to root economic problems deeply in the Iraqi society, with little effort to address or even find directions to solve them. So, why do we think of using design to tackle these problems? And what might be the role of design in such cases?
Scott Mitchell, PhD (Industrial Design)
Objects in flux: Modding Consumer Society
Objects in Flux is a research project which investigates the consumer modification of mass-produced goods. Commonly referred to as 'modding' such practices position consumers as active producers of material culture and disrupt the notion of passive consumption. Modding also reveals power structures established through and materially embedded in consumer goods, as modders seek to alter objects in their possession they are confronted with issues of access and control. The manipulation and circumvention of these power structures is a major theme within modding practices and a binding force within groups of modders. This research engages in existing modding communities by undertaking a number of modding projects. The projects reveal passionate and highly motivated individuals eager to speak about their activities and to contribute to the collective knowledge base of their field.
Sue Thomas, PhD (Fashion)
Fashion, Sustainability and Buddhist Ethics
Do the ethics embedded in the fashion production loop and sustainability design theory and their current applications serve the fashion industry, humanity, animals and the planet? Can Buddhist ethics offer potential guiding principles? The thesis questions whether the current interpretation of sustainability design theory fits fashion. In addition it queries how well current ethics serve or engage with fashion production loop participants, or sustainability and inclusive design theory parameters. The thesis explores the synergies Buddhist ethics share with sustainability, inclusive design theory, environmentalism, deep ecology, human rights, animal rights, and social justice, in this way constructing new parameters for the participants of the fashion design production loop. These questions and propositions will be addressed and explained through a reflective analysis of the motivators and applications of sustainability design. A new reading incorporating alternative Buddhist ethics will be proposed for the fashion industry, from a designer’s perspective.