From 2019 to 2023, Frederick was part of the research committee that laid the foundations for the Prospective Design graduate program at UTFPR, the first of its kind in the nation. Beginning in 2025, the program will offer a Master’s course.
The program aims to train design researchers who can contribute to structural transformations that foster more sustainable and socially just realities. Unlike most graduate design programs focusing on artifacts, this program addresses broader socio-technical structures such as energy systems, urban mobility, and housing organization. The program emphasizes interventions that value relational qualities like sustainability, equity, resilience, freedom, and solidarity, moving beyond the intrinsic qualities of artifacts.
The program is organized in two main research lines:
Infrastructures
- Focuses on the organizational, operational, and productive bases of societal structures. This includes tangible systems such as energy production, urban mobility, raw material supply chains, waste management, and public policies, as well as less tangible infrastructures like education and health systems.
- The research aims to analyze, question, and transform these infrastructures to align with relational qualities such as sustainability, equity, and conviviality. By doing so, it seeks to foster more inclusive and resilient societal systems.
- Projects in this line explore sustainable materials and processes, hybrid environments, participatory methods, and innovative solutions for managing and designing infrastructure.
Metastructures
- Deals with the ideological, political, ethical, and symbolic dimensions of societal structures, such as cultural values, traditions, aesthetics, and beliefs.
- This line investigates how meta-narratives influence human behaviors, social norms, and the legitimization of existing structures. By reimagining these meta-narratives, the research seeks to promote relational qualities such as freedom, equity, and solidarity.
- Projects focus on analyzing cultural values, image production (e.g., cinema, advertising), and the role of designers in shaping more diverse and inclusive future narratives.
Both lines are deeply interconnected and aim to foster structural transformations by addressing both the material and symbolic aspects of societal systems.
Video presentation
Basic curriculum
- Design, Technology, and Transition (04 credits)
- Research Through Design Methodologies (02 credits)
- Prospective Design of Infrastructures and Scenarios (04 credits)
- Seminars (02 credits)
Electives
- Urban rehabilitation (04 credits)
- Wicked problems and contradictions (04 credits)
- Scenario representation methods (04 credits)
- Participatory design (04 credits)
- Biomaterials (04 credits)
- Design for territory (04 credits)
Research context
References
Botter, F., van Amstel, F. M. C., Mazzarotto Filho, M., and Guimarães, C. (2024) Prospective design: A structuralist design aesthetic founded on relational qualities, in Gray, C., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.883
Saito, C., Freese Gonzatto, R., and van Amstel, F. (2024) Anticolonial prospects for overcoming the coloniality of making in design, in Gray, C., Hekkert, P., Forlano, L., Ciuccarelli, P. (eds.), DRS2024: Boston, 23–28 June, Boston, USA. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2024.255
Guimarães, C., & Van Amstel, F. M. C. (2024). Prospectando qualidades relacionais na educação em Design através da quilt-terapia. Arcos Design, 17(1), 190–211. https://doi.org/10.12957/arcosdesign.2024.77916
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
Van Amstel, Frederick M.C.; Guimarães, Cayley; Botter, Fernanda. (2021). Prospecting a systemic design space for pandemic responses. Strategic Design Research Journal, 14(1), pp.66-80. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4013/sdrj.2021.141.06
