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Syllabus⇝

Students will explore four distinct situated design practices. The course offers two complementary levels of exploration: one focused on geographical contexts and the other driven by community engagement. While these approaches can be examined separately, their materiality and meaning often intersect. The course invites students to discover, visit, and contextualize various metropolitan areas of Barcelona. Through this journey, we will delve into their unique identities, historical narratives, and contemporary realities. Students will engage with local communities involved in diverse professional and personal practices. We will also foster connections with artists, lawyers, journalists, and niche internet personalities to better understand how communities emerge or are shaped—whether recognized or hidden, institutionalized or marginalized, celebrated or stigmatized.

Learning Objectives⇝

  • Community driven design
  • Research trough design
  • Ciritcal positioning
  • Commitment development
  • Community engagement
  • Situated design practices
  • The politics of design

Keywords: Community, Commitment, Context, Expanded Realities

Schedule⇝

13:00-15:00

Session with Mario Santamaria about Internet Tour

15:00-17:00

Visit to Barceloa Supercomputing Center

The artistic practice of Mario Santamaría studies the phenomenon of the contemporary observer, paying attention to two processes, the representational practices and the machine's vision or mediation. Using different tactics such as appropriation, remake or assembly, his work involves different fields like the conflict, the memory, the virtuality or the surveillance.

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center–Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) is Spain’s national supercomputing center. We specialize in high-performance computing (HPC) and operate MareNostrum, one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe.

9:30-17:30 Bike trip to Cal Negre

Meeting Pointat 9:30: TBC at El Prat de Llobregat 10:00 – Pick up the bikes 10:30 – Bike trip to Cal Negre and introduction 11:00 – Cal Negre activities 13:00 – Lunch 14:30 – Cal Negre activities 17:00 – Bike Trip to Caserna and Casa del Semáfore at El Prat Beach

Cal Negre is a community, a house, and an experimental space located just 200 meters from the Barcelona Airport at El Prat de Llobregat. Its residents explore communal ways of living and working, deeply engaging with the surrounding territory and context.

12:00-14:00

Session with Anna Engelhardt about Toxic Information Environments

12:00 – Online talk by Anna Engelhardt about toxic information environments 13:30 – Q&A

Anna Engelhardt investigative practice follows the traces of material violence, focusing on what could be seen as the ‘ghost’ of information. The toxic information environments she deals with stem from structures of extraction, occupation and dispossession. Her work has been shown at transmediale, Berlin; ICA, London; Ars Electronica; Biennial TEA Tenerife; National Gallery of Art, Lithuania; B3 Biennial of the Moving Image, Frankfurt; The Henie Onstad Triennial for Photography and New Media, Oslo; Kyiv Biennial.

9:30-11:30

Session with Hibai Harbide about Borders and Forced Communities

9:30 – Online talk by Hibai Harbide about borders and forced communities 11:00 – Q&A

Hibai Arbide Aza is a lawyer by training but works as a journalist. Since 2014, he has been living in Greece, where he has worked as a television correspondent and has published in print media for various international outlets. He has been a member of Muzungu Producciones since 2015. For nearly two decades, he has been involved in issues related to borders and freedom of movement; first as an activist, then as a lawyer, and now as a journalist, covering the so-called “refugee crisis” of recent years in Greece, the Balkans, the Middle East, and Germany. Other common topics in his work include social issues, civil rights, and LGBTQ+ matters

Methodological Strategies⇝

  • Case studies
  • Tours / Itineraries
  • Workshops
  • Lectures
  • Group discussions
  • Team-based learning

Deliverables⇝

Situated design practice positioning + Community of impact framing (Text/pictorial)

Grading Method⇝

Percentage Description
20% Participation
30% Text
50% Personal reflections

European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS)

3 ECTS

Faculty⇝

Saúl Baeza

Saúl Baeza

MDEF Co-Director

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.