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Critical pedagogy

  1. Tips and tricks for writing design research

    Tips and tricks for writing design research

    Why are design researchers not so excited about reading and writing if that is an integral aspect of doing design research? In my view, designers are typically exploited in so many ways, primarily for cheap labor. They are not expected to say anything, just give form to previously defined functions and content. In a critical […] - Sep 23, 2024
  2. Reading the world with Lego Serious Play

    Reading the world with Lego Serious Play

    Abstract: “Reading the world precedes reading the word,” says Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator who revolutionized adult education. Instead of requiring students to read words without understanding their meanings, his educational approach, critical pedagogy, begins with reading the world through generative images that depict everyday scenes. Lego Serious Play can play a similar role in […] - Aug 28, 2024
  3. Cultural alienation in design

    Cultural alienation in design

    Some months ago, I joined Lee Moreau, Lesley-Ann Noel, and Alicia Cheng in the inaugural episodes of the Design As podcast (Apple/Spotify), connected to the Design Observer project. We discussed Design as Culture. The conversation was so rich and dense that we split it into two parts. Luckily, Design Observer published a transcript for those […] - Jun 1, 2024
  4. Crisis Deck (2022-2023)

    Crisis Deck (2022-2023)

    From the outset of their design education at UTFPR, Alanis Louise de Mello Zukowski and Maria Vitória Ribeiro Kosake were struck by a disconnect between their aspirations and the education they received. The design curriculum seemed narrowly focused on technical skills and market demands, leaving little room for critical reflection or social engagement. As they […] - May 9, 2024
  5. Learning design as a human right: the beginnings of a design lab founded on critical pedagogy

    Learning design as a human right: the beginnings of a design lab founded on critical pedagogy

    Bizotto dos Santos, W.B., Mazzarotto, M.,and Van Amstel, F.(2023) Learning design as a human right: the beginnings of a design lab founded on critical pedagogy, in Derek Jones, Naz Borekci, Violeta Clemente, James Corazzo, Nicole Lotz, Liv Merete Nielsen, Lesley-Ann Noel (eds.), The 7th International Conference for Design Education Researchers, 29 November – 1 December 2023, […] - Mar 18, 2024
  6. When Is the Pluriverse?

    When Is the Pluriverse?

    Udoewa, V., Gutiérrez Borrero, A., Noel, L., Ruiz, A., Borchway, N.K., Lodaya, A.,and VAN AMSTEL, F.M.(2023) When Is the Pluriverse?, in Derek Jones, Naz Borekci, Violeta Clemente, James Corazzo, Nicole Lotz, Liv Merete Nielsen, Lesley-Ann Noel (eds.), The 7th International Conference for Design Education Researchers, 29 November – 1 December 2023, London, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drslxd.2023.109 - Mar 14, 2024
  7. Conscious design for a women shelter (2023)

    Conscious design for a women shelter (2023)

    Camila Kutiski heard from a friend about a shelter service for victims of domestic violence in her neighborhood. She visited the non-profit running the service and decided to support the people involved with her Graphic Design final work at UTFPR. The first thing she did was to understand the existing design activities in the non-profit. […] - Feb 24, 2024
  8. Taking a side: critical formation and outreaching practice in Laboratory of Design against Oppression (LADO)

    Taking a side: critical formation and outreaching practice in Laboratory of Design against Oppression (LADO)

    Bizotto dos Santos, W., Mazzarotto, M., & Van Amstel, F. (2024). Tomando um LADO: formação crítica e prática de liberdade no Laboratório de Design contra Opressões. Arcos Design, 17(1), 143–175. https://doi.org/10.12957/arcosdesign.2024.78425 - Jan 10, 2024
  9. Prospecting anti-colonial qualities in Design Education

    Prospecting anti-colonial qualities in Design Education

    Mazzarotto. M., Van Amstel. F. M. C., Serpa, B. O., Silva, S. B. (2023). Prospecting anti-colonial qualities in Design Education. V!RUS Journal, 26, 135-143. Translated from Portuguese by Giovana Blitzkow Scucato dos Santos. Available at: http://vnomads.eastus.cloudapp.azure.com/ojs/index.php/virus/article/view/833 - Dec 26, 2023
  10. Pluriversal Futures for Design Education

    Pluriversal Futures for Design Education

    Noel, L.-A., Ruiz, A., van Amstel, F. M. C., Udoewa, V., Verma, N., Botchway, N. K., Lodaya, A., & Agrawal, S. (2023). Pluriversal Futures for Design Education. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation (Vol. 9, Issue 2, pp. 179–196). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2023.04.002 - Sep 3, 2023
  11. Humanity is not a (shopping) center you can design for

    Humanity is not a (shopping) center you can design for

    Donald Norman is about to release a book on Humanity-Centered Design. I don’t plan to buy or read it, but I can’t ignore it. As I previously wrote, shifting what is at the center of design does little to reconfigure the contradictions cultivated by centralization, which is a core spatial practice of patriarchy, capitalism, and […] - Oct 23, 2022
  12. Design, Oppression, and Liberation

    Design, Oppression, and Liberation

    Van Amstel, F. M. C, Noel, L.-A., & Gonzatto, R. F. (2022). Design, Oppression, and Liberation. Diseña, (21), Intro. https://doi.org/10.7764/disena.21.Intro - Sep 13, 2022
  13. Laboratory of Design against Oppression (LADO)

    Laboratory of Design against Oppression (LADO)

    The Laboratory of Design Against Oppressions (LADO) is an open, horizontal space for critical education, scientific research, and transformative action at UTFPR. Attentive to the objectives of student involvement and participation in university outreach, LADO is organized through self-management, including collective decision-making and distribution of power among the several working groups created to coordinate each of […] - Aug 11, 2022
  14. Weaving design as a practice of freedom: Critical pedagogy in an insurgent network

    Weaving design as a practice of freedom: Critical pedagogy in an insurgent network

    Serpa, B.O., van Amstel, F.M., Mazzarotto, M., Carvalho, R.A., Gonzatto, R.F., Batista e Silva, S., and da Silva Menezes, Y. (2022) Weaving design as a practice of freedom: Critical pedagogy in an insurgent network, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June – 3 July, Bilbao, […] - Jun 21, 2022
  15. Designers as cultural producers (2022)

    Designers as cultural producers (2022)

    Polyana de Andrade Tavares, a graphic design student at LADO, embarked on a profound journey of collective conscientization that transformed her understanding of her role as a cultural producer. Her final work reflects on this transformative process through an autoethnographic lens, weaving together personal experiences and broader socio-cultural contexts. Initially, Polyana approached her study with […] - Jun 1, 2022
  16. Remote Forum Theater

    Remote Forum Theater

    Forum Theater provides a forum to test and rehearse actions and responses to oppressive situations in the form of an interactive play. What differentiates Forum Theatre from other interactive theatre techniques is precisely its political goal of human and social emancipation. By stimulating the spectator’s effective intervention, Forum Theatre seeks to provoke reflections about the forms of […] - Apr 17, 2022
  17. Design pedagogy, the body, and solidarity in designing commons

    Design pedagogy, the body, and solidarity in designing commons

    Podcast interview for the Commoning Design & Designing Commons show, an initiative from the Interest Group Commons and Commoning of the IT University of Copenhagen. Listen to the podcast on Anchor. Transcript Speaker Key – GP Giacomo Poderi; FA Frederick van Amstel; SM Sanna-Maria Marttila; JS Joanna Saad-Sulonen Speaker Text GP Okay, welcome to this first […] - Apr 12, 2022
  18. Technology-Mediated Oppression

    Technology-Mediated Oppression

    Summary: Can technology oppress or liberate people? This lecture introduces the Philosophy of Technology of Álvaro Vieira Pinto in dealing with this question. Vieira Pinto wrote extensively about cybernetics, artificial intelligence, transhumanism, and virtual reality’s role in mediating race, class, and colonial oppression, anticipating in the 1970s what STS scholars in other countries did in […] - Nov 3, 2021
  19. Designing against oppression

    Designing against oppression

    This talk presents the activity of the Design & Oppression, woven by design professors, students, and professionals from all over Brazil from the perspective of one of its cofounders. The network discussed and experimented with several ways of recognizing how design reproduces oppression in our society. As of late 2021, the network is interested in […] - Oct 29, 2021
  20. Relational design and the contradiction of oppression

    Relational design and the contradiction of oppression

    Una charla en la sesión 8 de la Cátedra Diseño, Arte y Ciencia acogida pela Facultades de Artes y Diseño y de Ciencias Naturales e Ingeniería de la Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano (Colombia). Abstracto: El Diseño Relacional es una transformación profunda en la teoria y practica del diseño, en que se pierde el objeto para […] - Sep 21, 2021
  21. Designs of the Oppressed

    Designs of the Oppressed

    Designs of the Oppressed was a free online course offered by UTFPR, in partnership with the Design & Oppression network in 2021 and 2022, as part of larger efforts to strengthen Brazilian universities’ international reach. In it, several members of the network presented their work and promoted dialogues. The course shares the accumulated experience of […] - Aug 26, 2021
  22. Domesticated futures and monster aesthetics

    Domesticated futures and monster aesthetics

    So far, design has contributed mostly to domesticate futures for the colonized. Nevertheless, design can also serve decolonizing practices that bring back the contradictory nature of human futures. The domestication of the future is a colonialist strategy that reduces existential time to a desirable space of possibilities that can be designed, packaged, and sold to […] - May 18, 2021
  23. Designing for Liberation

    Designing for Liberation

    As institutions or individuals, design bodies have been weaponized for war, colonization, racism, sexism, ableism, and other forms of oppression. This talk reports on the Designing for Liberation research program that, since 2010, engages diverse design bodies with the fight against all forms of oppression. This program unleashes designing potentials that have been prevented or […] - Apr 8, 2021
  24. The political body as a fulcrum for radical imagination in metadesign

    The political body as a fulcrum for radical imagination in metadesign

    Angelon, Rafaela; Van Amstel, Frederick M.C. (2020). The political body as a fulcrum for radical imagination in metadesign. In: Proceedings of the III Design Culture Symposium, Unisinos, Porto Alegre, Brasil. - Nov 9, 2020
  25. A Visual Summary of Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970)

    A Visual Summary of Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970)

    This is a book summary for the Pluriversal Design Book Club. It is a short contextualized introduction to Paulo Freire’s magnum opus. The main feature of this introduction is a visual scheme to frame the historical-dialectical relationships developed throughout the book: oppression, banking education, and colonization. This scheme also considers the emergence of third forces […] - Oct 30, 2020
  26. The Anthropophagic Studio:  Towards a Critical Pedagogy for Interaction Design

    The Anthropophagic Studio: Towards a Critical Pedagogy for Interaction Design

    Van Amstel, Frederick M.C and Gonzatto, Rodrigo Freese. (2020) The Anthropophagic Studio: Towards a Critical Pedagogy for Interaction Design. Digital Creativity, 31(4), p. 259-283. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14626268.2020.1802295 - Jul 25, 2020
  27. Matters of Care in Designing a Feminist Coalition

    Matters of Care in Designing a Feminist Coalition

    Eleutério, Rafaella P. and Van Amstel, Frederick M.C. Matters of Care in Designing a Feminist Coalition. (2020). In: Proceedings of the 16th Participatory Design Conference. Manizales, Colombia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3384772.3385157 - Jun 13, 2020
  28. Course design and design (in)discipline

    Course design and design (in)discipline

    Course design and design (in)discipline (2020) was a talk given at the Innovative practices in higher education panel from UTFPR teaching seminars. UTFPR has been conducting debates and workshops on Course Design, a pedagogical approach that aims to promote innovation in education. Despite borrowing the term Design, this loan does not reach cutting-edge research in […] - Apr 27, 2020
  29. Thinking with the whole body

    Thinking with the whole body

    Thinking with the whole body (2020) was a workshop offered in UTFPR teaching seminars. The Technological University usually stimulates its students to think primarily with the brain, ignoring the biological and social support of this organ. Physical activity is restricted to complementary activities, which are isolated from the primary processes of learning, assessment, and knowledge […] - Apr 27, 2020
  30. When black people move, all the possibilities of future move with them

    When black people move, all the possibilities of future move with them

    Silva, R. L. P. da, Santos, M. R. dos, & Amstel, F. V. (2020). Quando o negro se movimenta, toda a possibilidade de futuro com ele se move (When the black’s people moves, all possibility of future with him moves). Albuquerque: Journal of History, 11(21), 132-150. https://doi.org/10.46401/ajh.2019.v11.9589 - Apr 15, 2020
  31. Conscious Periphery COVID-19 communication (2020)

    Conscious Periphery COVID-19 communication (2020)

    Conscious Periphery is an emergency outreach activity funded by UTFPR to fight misinformation about the COVID-19 in vulnerable communities around the university. To reach this aim, the students involved in the activity will collaborate with community leaders to find the right tune as well as with healthcare professionals to deliver the correct information. The messages […] - Apr 9, 2020
  32. Theater of the Techno-Oppressed

    Theater of the Techno-Oppressed

    Despite all the hype and hope around it, technology is not inherently good. Historically, technology has often intensified oppressions such as xenophobia, sexism, and racism. Social movements, activist groups, and oppressed people need to be aware of how technology does that and, especially, how it uncovers that under the pretext of neutrality. Theater of the […] - Apr 6, 2020
  33. Seeking freedom in design

    Seeking freedom in design

    Open Design was initially introduced as an analog to Open Source Software, a concept which explains why software source code should be part of an official product release. The analogy went by stating that electronic drawings and models be released together with physical products, in the hopes of enabling modifications or self-production through digital fabrication. […] - Apr 6, 2020
  34. Design for People: Laboratory of Design and Social Innovation

    Design for People: Laboratory of Design and Social Innovation

    60 hours – Bachelor in Design – UTFPR This studio course lets students discuss and realize the role of design in increasing or decreasing social inequalities. To realize that, they must develop a design project together with a disenfranchised community. Before joining a community, however, they must learn how to design together. Hence, the course […] - Mar 23, 2020
  35. Solidarity Economy Incubator

    Solidarity Economy Incubator

    TECSOL is UTFPR’s Solidarity Economy Incubator. This outreach project assists disenfranchised communities to organize solidarity work relations, fair trade markets, and public policy advocacy for Solidarity Economy. Solidarity Economy is understood as an alternative mode of production which can work within Capitalism to overcome its limitations, such as poverty and dehumanization. I helped the incubator […] - Jul 8, 2019
  36. Designing for liberation

    Designing for liberation

    Design is often defined as a professional activity that produces physical and symbolic artifacts. However, in contemporary common parlance, the design word is also used to describe the characteristics of this professional activity’s products. Despite professionals claiming responsibility for these qualities, there is ample evidence that such qualities are not defined solely by professionals. Instead, […] - Oct 31, 2018
  37. Cities and Technologies

    Cities and Technologies

    Cities and Technologies is a 30 hours graduate course from the Urban Management program from PUCPR. The course was delivered by professors Rodrigo Firmino, Fabio Duarte, Rodrigo Gonzatto, and Frederick van Amstel. After reading and discussing various articles from the field of Science, Technology, and Society (STS), the students engaged in three workshops led by […] - Apr 28, 2018
  38. Designing oppressive and libertarian interactions with the conscious body

    Designing oppressive and libertarian interactions with the conscious body

    Gonzatto, R. F., & van Amstel, F. M. (2017, October). Designing oppressive and libertarian interactions with the conscious body. In Proceedings of the XVI Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 22, 10 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3160504.3160542 - Oct 31, 2017
  39. Interaction Design (a.k.a The Anthropophagic Studio)

    Interaction Design (a.k.a The Anthropophagic Studio)

    Regular course – 80 hs – Digital Design Bachelor – Catholic University of Paraná (PUCPR) – Taught together with Rodrigo Gonzatto This course develops students’ creative and critical skills related to technology and society. Since the Digital Design Bachelor has already separate courses on Usability, Information Architecture, Ergonomics, and Interface Design, the Interaction Design course focuses […] - Aug 8, 2016
  40. Faber-Ludens Interaction Design Institute (2007-2012)

    Faber-Ludens Interaction Design Institute (2007-2012)

    Inspired by European Design schools that embraced the Digital Culture, like Ivrea Institute and its successor, Copenhagen Institute for Interaction Design (cIId), a multidisciplinary group founded Faber-Ludens Institute for Interaction Design in Curitiba, in 2007. As a non-profit organization, Faber-Ludens had a democratic (sometimes anarchic) governance model, which favored intense collaboration between its members and […] - Mar 26, 2007