Design Studio II
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Syllabus⇝
Design Studio I - Embodied Criticism
MDEF Research, Design and Development studios aim to take areas of research, interests and/or initial project ideas into an advanced stage of the research, with an execution plan. The studio structure in three terms could be understood as follows:
TERM 1 Embodied Criticism
TERM 2 Problematize
TERM 3 Develop
Keywords: Critical Design, Problematization, Ethics of Design, AV Narratives, Materiality, Spatial Infrastructures, Territoriality, Research Entanglements, Situated Practice, Power Structures, Alternative Presents
Learning Objectives⇝
The specific goals are the following
- Critically interrogate personal assumptions, research entanglements, and ethical positions shaping the project.
- Develop situated analytical skills by problematizing narratives, objects, materialities, and spatial infrastructures.
- Engage critically with contexts and communities, understanding the geopolitical, ecological, and technoscientific forces that condition design interventions.
- Assemble and articulate a coherent set of problematizations—statements, AV narratives, objects, and spatial artifacts—demonstrating accountable and reflexive design practice.
- Reflect on how design enacts alternative presents, exposing power structures while proposing more responsible modes of intervention.
Schedule⇝
PROBLEMATIZE guides students through a staged interrogation of their projects—ethical, narrative, material, and spatial—toward more critical, situated, and accountable design interventions. The course begins with an examination of personal biases and research entanglements through errors and fascinations, followed by a deeper inquiry into the ethical implications of each project across scales from self to planet. Narrative then becomes a method for revealing complexity, culminating in a concise AV piece that maps conceptual, contextual, and affective dimensions.
As the course progresses, the focus expands to the material and political lives of objects, examining their embedded power structures through design and critical inquiry. This leads into spatial problematization, where students analyze infrastructures, territorialities, and geopolitical forces shaping their work. Through iterative reviews, students assemble a curated constellation of statements, narratives, objects, and spatial artifacts in preparation for the Design Dialogues exhibition.
Problematize Yourself. Guests: Toni Llàcer
Assignment for 12/01: Reflect on your and your project’s current stage of development allowing your project to talk back. Analyze your so-called “failures” as opportunities for redefining your frames of reference and repositioning yourself and your project accordingly. Deliverable for 12/01: Problematize Yourself: present yourself with 5 errors + 5 fascinations (based on all your creative process till the moment)
Goals: - Emphasize the importance of rigor and depth in design research to inform interventions. - Introduce methods for collecting, analyzing, and organizing data to strengthen research outcomes. - Highlight strategies for linking insights to actions, ensuring research is actionable and grounded in real-world contexts. - Foster critical reflection on the research process, encouraging students to question assumptions and biases.
Activity: Briefly present in class Problematize Myself: 5 errors + 5 fascinations. Feedback by Toni Llàcer.
Assignment: Problematize all the ethical entanglements of your project. What ethics do your project enact consciously? What ethics do your project enact unconsciously?
Deliverable: Problematize Ethics: write a list of at least 4 major ethical problems, based on the following scales Me– My Community–Society–Planet.
Problematize Ethics. Guests: Toni Navarro
Goals:
- Explore the ethical dimensions of design and its impact on emergent futures.
- Develop a critical perspective as a foundational skill for analyzing and questioning assumptions, frameworks, and contexts.
- Emphasize the importance of commitment and thoroughness in the design process, highlighting accountability and sustained effort.
- Equip students with tools to integrate ethics into their interventions, ensuring designs advocate for equity, sustainability, and resilience.
Activity: Briefly present in class Problematize Ethics: Me– My Community–Society–Planet. Feedback by Toni Navarro.
Assignment: Problematize the narrative that your project builds: semiotics, critical entanglements with complex contexts, material inquiries, affective ecosystems, direct interventions of proposal and critique, etc.
Deliverable: Problematize Narrative: 1 AV Narrative (max. 90sec.) which represents the complexity of concept+ problematics + creative interventions + continuity.
Problematize Narratives. Guests: Gerard Ortín
Goals: Research-driven yet artistic approach to challenging dominant narratives by examining their own trajectories as design tools. Explore AV narratives as a critical practice to shape meaning and articulate alternative presents.
Activity: Briefly present in class Problematize Narrative: 1 AV Narrative. Feedback by Gerard Ortín.
Assignment: Problematize objectuality and materiality: question the performativity of the current formalization of your project: what objects, what artifacts, what situations do they trigger, what kind of questions do they open, what kind of alternative presents do they enact?
Deliverable: Problematize Objects: 1 Object (or a curated collection of objects) + a proposal for enactment and performance.
Problematize Objects. Guests: Grandeza Studio
Goals: Interrogate everyday objects — and the spatial, cultural, economicand political systems they embody — using design, research and critical practice. Examine how objects carry hidden narratives of power, labor, extraction, and colonialism, and explore ways to de-sign, reimagine or subvert them.
Activity: Briefly present in class Problematize Objects: 1 Object (or a curated collection of objects). Feedback by Grandeza Studio.
Assignment: Problematize Spatiality. Interrogate the spatial logics and material conditions shaping your project. Question the performativity of its current spatial formalization: what spaces and infrastructures does it produce or rely on? What situations do they trigger? What geopolitical, ecological, or technoscientific questions do they open? What alternative spatial presents or territorial imaginaries do they enact?
Deliverable: Problematize Space: Produce a critical spatial artifact: this may take the form of a spatial model, map, diagram, or a curated constellation of spatial elements. Accompany it with a proposal for its enactment or spatial performance, articulating how it challenges, exposes, or reconfigures the spatial systems at play.
Problematize Space. Guests: Blanca Pujals
Goals: Critically examine the politics embedded in spaces, and infrastructures. Through spatial research, design, analysis, and interdisciplinary media, explore how material forms reflect power, geopolitics, technoscience, and territorial control — then reimagine and challenge those relationships.
Activity: Briefly present in class Problematize Space: Critical Spatial Artifact (model, map, diagram). Feedback by Blanca Pujals.
Assignment: Collection of problematizations: 1 Statement + 1 AV Narrative + 1 Object (or curated collection) + 1 Spatial Infrastructure.
Deliverable: Profile each one of the components that you will exhibit in the design dialogues and bring them to class ( 1 Statement + 1 AV Narrative + 1 Object (or curated collection) + 1 Spatial Infrastructure).
Design Dialogues II Preparation
Goals: Create a collective and individual building up plan for the Design Dialogues exhibition.
Activity: Group dynamic to create themes and groups of projects for the exhibition.
Task: Planning of the exhibition, space allocation and special needs.
Deliverable: Work on the design dialogues deliverables.
Deliverables⇝
Deadline: 09/03/2026
A dossier based on: 1. Problematize (Five Scales): Edit and refine all phase-specific outputs (Statement, AV Narrative, Object/Collection, Spatial Infrastructure) according to the feedback received across the five scales problematization. This final edited set must demonstrate how your project’s narratives, materialities, ethical positions, and spatial propositions evolve through iterative critique, articulating a coherent and accountable design inquiry.
Problematize Yourself: present yourself with 5 errors + 5 fascinations (based on all your creative process till the moment)
Problematize Ethics: write a list of at least 4 major ethical problems, based on the following scales Me– My Community–Society–Planet
Problematize Narrative: 1 AV Narrative (max. 90sec.) which represents the complexity of concept+ problematics + creative interventions + continuity
Problematize Objects: 1 Object (or a curated collection of objects) + a proposal for enactment and performance
Problematize Space: Produce a critical spatial artifact: this may take the form of a spatial model, map, diagram, or a curated constellation of spatial elements. Accompany it with a proposal for its enactment or spatial performance, articulating how it challenges, exposes, or reconfigures the spatial systems at play.
2. Theoretical Statement 1500-word theoretical statement articulating the conceptual, ethical, and methodological foundations of their project. The text must situate the work within relevant theoretical lineages and contemporary debates, demonstrating how the project problematizes narratives, objects, and spaces. The statement should map the project’s epistemic commitments, its entanglements with power, infrastructures, and technoscience, and its contribution to emergent design futures. It must reference at least six key theoretical works, integrating them critically—rather than descriptively—to clarify how theory informs the project’s stance, methods, and interventions.
These are the points we are going to look at for Term II:
- Involvement of the community through the design interventions
- Situating the design interventions in context
- Framing opportunities considering resilience, material flows, situated knowledges and existing infrastructures in your design process
Evaluation Strategies⇝
These are the points we are going to look at for Term 2:
1. Critical Depth & Reflexivity
Assess the student’s ability to interrogate their project across ethical, narrative, material, and spatial dimensions. Evaluation considers how well they identify biases, articulate entanglements, question assumptions, and incorporate feedback. Strong work demonstrates sustained critical inquiry, conceptual rigor, and an evolving capacity to let the project “talk back,” showing awareness of implications across scales from self to territory to planet.
2. Research Integration & Design Articulation
Evaluate how effectively students translate research into design propositions. This includes the synthesis of multimodal investigations (statements, narratives, objects, spatial artifacts) and their capacity to connect insights to interventions. Attention is placed on clarity, coherence, and the student’s ability to operationalize theory through form, practice, and experimentation. Strong performance shows grounded, situated design decisions supported by evidence and critical reasoning.
3. Prototyping, Performance & Communicative Capacity
Assess the quality of produced artifacts—statement, AV narratives, objects, spatial models—and their performative or enactment potential. Evaluation examines craft, intentionality, and the student’s ability to communicate complexity through multimodal formats. Strong outcomes demonstrate iterative development, thoughtful material and spatial choices, and the ability to stage or propose interventions that expose, challenge, or reconfigure dominant systems, culminating in a coherent exhibition-ready constellation.
100% Faculty (including first Thesis draft)
Grading Method⇝
| Percentage | Description |
|---|---|
| 50% | Faculty (including written assignment) |
| 50% | Self-Evaluation |
European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS)
12 ECTS
Faculty⇝
Architect, researcher and professor. PhD in Aesthetics and Theory of Arts. Her area of work is based on the critical transaction between politics, space and affect, with a special interest in the possibilities of direct action. In her professional career, she carries out projects that address heterogeneous architectural and artistic formats between temporary interventions in public space and socio-spatial practices of collaboration and mapping. She has been visiting professor and guest lecturer at universities worldwide and she has published both specialized articles and book chapters, mainly addressing counterdisciplinary strategies through direct action, cartographies, embodied exploration and performative criticality.
Saúl Baeza is DOES and MAYBE Creative Director, VISIONS BY Founder and Editor-in-chief and VIBE content director. While lecturing at Elisava Barcelona University of Design and Engineering he also researches functional and digital identities as part of the “Making with..." Research Group (TU Eindhoven Research) and "Futures Now" Research Group (Elisava Research). Saúl is the co-director of the Master in Design For Emergent Futures (MDEF), organised by the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) and Elisava Barcelona School of Design and Engineering, in collaboration with the Fab Academy. Saúl has been visiting professor and lecturer at international universities, educational institutions and cultural venues such as Harvard GSD, Central Saint Martins and London College of Communication (UAL), Institute for advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC), RMIT University Melbourne, Rhode Island School of Design, Pascual Bravo University in Medellín, Sónar+D, Victoria&Albert Museum, CCCB and DHUB, among others.