Splash Biography

Design intelligence is a practice that results in the objects that populate our lives: books, iPods, desks, chairs, websites, buildings, and so on. Simply put, every man-made object in your life spent months or even years as an idea, a sketch, and a prototype long before it made it into your hands. The process by which these objects are made is at once abstract and pragmatic, yielding highly productive results, yet so far has been limited to schools of design. This course proposes to engage a larger audience and look at design intelligence as an intellectual practice for thinkers in any field, enriching and enhancing their work and opening their eyes to the thought process that goes into the objects that surround them.

Most aspects of the modern American lifestyle rely heavily on abundant energy extracted at low cost. If our flow of cheap, abundant energy were to stop altogether for any length of time, our lifestyle would be catapulted at least a century back in time. Yet somehow, the sources of this most pervasive force in our lives, the thing that allows us to thrive and prosper, is often forgotten about or taken for granted. In this class we will explore everything from the everyday uses of to the geopolitical implications of modern energy use in a quick but informative survey course with lots of pretty pictures, graphs and diagrams.