PROGRAM STRUCTURE
The focus of the first year of study is threefold—on design as subject matter, on criticism as a literary genre and on the range of tools with which to practice design criticism. The second year offers the opportunity for specialization both in subject matter and format. Students participate in medium-specific workshops devoted to topics such as producing a radio program or documentary, curating an exhibition, or editing a magazine or blog. They then research and develop a large-scale thesis project that must include a substantial written component, and which may be realized in any format.
The program culminates in an annual public conference, conceived and organized by graduating students, in which they present papers based on their theses, alongside professional design critics and thinkers. Students are required to complete and present the thesis research, which must be reviewed and approved by the thesis committee and the department chair, in order to be eligible for degree conferral.
Degree candidates must successfully complete 64 credits, including all required courses, with a cumulative grade point average of 3.0. A residency of two academic years is required.
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DAY |
TIME |
COURSE |
INSTRUCTOR |
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Monday |
1:00 pm |
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Tuesday |
1:00 pm |
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Wednesday |
5:00 pm |
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Thursday |
5:00 pm |
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DAY |
TIME |
COURSE |
INSTRUCTOR |
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Monday |
5:00 pm |
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Tuesday |
10:00am |
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Wednesday |
12:30pm |
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Thursday |
2:00 pm |
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Friday |
3:00 pm |
D-CRIT COURSES, 2008–2010
Design History
The Critical Imperative
Architecture and Urban Design Criticism
Urban Curation
Reading Design
Researching Design
Exhibition and Collection Curation
Reviewing a Design Exhibition Workshop
Criticism Lab
Lecture Series
Radio and Podcast Workshop
Print Meets the Web
Short-form Essay Workshop
The Longest (and Heaviest) Form: The Design Book
Magazines Under the Microscope
Cultural Theory Meets Design
Reviewing a Restaurant Workshop
Design Studio Visits/Interviewing Techniques
Typologies
Thesis Development
Thesis Consultation
Thesis Production and Presentation
Conference Lab
Beginning with an overview of developments arising from the Industrial Revolution and culminating in a series of guest lectures dealing with aspects of contemporary design, this survey equips students with a solid background in the history of design. As students in the design criticism program arrive with divergent backgrounds, one goal of this course is to establish a common language and to enable students to identify major touchstones and reliable reference points as they formulate an accurate chronology of events. Emphasis will be placed on the changing interpretations of what constitutes modernism during the period 1918–1968. [Return to List]
The Critical Imperative
As society has become more complex, and our needs more diverse, so have the performance criteria for design. The aim of this lecture and discussion-based course is to equip students to respond critically to design. This entails critical thinking, critical looking, critical listening and a critical attitude toward any other components of design that affect judgment. In searching out guidelines for exercising critical capacities students will consider such concerns as taste, subjectivity, objectivity, "constructive" versus "destructive" criticism, and motivations noble and petty. The class will study and discuss the writings of William Morris, John Ruskin, as well as modern critics such as Gilbert Seldes, Reyner Banham, and Edward Kaufmann, Jr., and contemporary critics like Ada Louise Huxtable, Martin Filler, and Jessica Helfand. In addition this course will examine criticism in other fields such as literature, theatre, art, and music, and the extension of critical analysis to fashion, food, dance, sports, film and other aspects of popular culture. [Return to List]
Architecture and Urban Design Criticism
This course exposes students to the work of twentieth century architecture and design critics, especially those who lived and worked in New York City, and those who write and wrote for the popular press. Authors to be considered include authorities such as Montgomery Schuyler and Lewis Mumford as well as contemporary urban critics writing for major publications like Robert Campbell, Christopher Hawthorne and Blair Kamin. One class will be devoted to critiques of the skyscraper, another to urban park projects, another to museums and design exhibitions, another to urban signage projects and the branding of neighborhoods. In preparation for these themed reading sessions, and the eventual production of their own reviews, students will visit one of the New York City sites critiqued, and write a short presentation on their observations. The second focus of the semester will be the writing of three student reviews, each workshopped in class and revised following constructive criticism from classmates and teacher. [Return to List]
Urban Curation
In this course students act as curators of the city. They will consult writings by innovative urban theorists (like Henry Adam, John Ruskin, John Berger, Jane Jacobs, Ian Frazier and Colson Whitehead), as well as pieces from contemporary magazines and websites. However, the heart of the class will be a weekly assignment based on a design scavenger hunt: students will be asked to find the most significant building on a randomly chosen New York city block and make a case for their selection; find an object on the street that tells you that this is the 21st century and decide what that object says about this moment in time; go to Times Square and find the best piece of design and the worst piece of design; visit Crate & Barrel, Muji, and Pearl River, and decide which one best represents the notion of good design and why. Students will develop an eye for their surroundings, and gain confidence in their own abilities to identify meaning—and perhaps even beauty—in a cluttered, chaotic environment. [Return to List]
Reading Design
Students are asked to investigate popular national media with an eye to how design plays a part in so many of the events that shape our times. Newspapers have home and style sections, but the noteworthy design stories tend also to be found elsewhere: In politics, finance and even sports articles. Readings extend to essays, fiction, nonfiction and poetry—narratives in which design also plays a significant part—reinforcing a comprehensive and critical understanding about design that goes far beyond the styling of consumer products. [Return to List]
Researching Design
The ability to conduct extensive and finely honed research is one of the design critic's richest resources. This course explores the interrelated processes of uncovering, collecting and categorizing data. Working directly with primary sources such as correspondence, institutional documents and promotional materials, students will test a range of methodologies derived from disciplines such as anthropology, sociology and material culture. Visits to a selection of New York's most significant and intriguing public and private archives, collections and libraries, as well as online and database research are included. [Return to List]
Exhibition and Collection Curation
Design curation is a vital and growing area of critical design discourse. This class provides an overview of how design has been collected and presented in museum and exhibition contexts to date, and introduces some of the alternative approaches currently being practiced. The course will specifically focus in the design collection and exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Students will analyze various curatorial strategies and the whole process of curating an exhibition, from the research phase to the structuring of content through narrative, chronology or themes, and the final set-up in the gallery space. With the input of different Museum departments and staff, and in collaboration with a designer if necessary, students will develop their own exhibition concepts. [Return to List]
Reviewing a Design Exhibition Workshop
In this class students have the opportunity to see behind the scenes during the installation of a major exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Deputy curatorial director Matilda McQuaid will give an overview of her curatorial work and introduce students to some of the key issues associated with design curation for the general public. The class will focus on the conception and development of an exhibition, and observe the installation of the show, attend its press launch, and then produce their own reviews. Finally, the students' reviews will be critiqued alongside those written by professional critics in the national press. [Return to List]
Criticism Lab
This intensive workshop allows students to hone their writerly voice while being exposed to some of the forms and subject areas typical of contemporary design criticism. Weekly assignments, ranging from 250-word blurbs on new buildings to a 2,500-word essay on a signage campaign, will be reviewed with the class and one-on-one with the instructor. The aim of the class is to develop each student's method of argumentation, comfort with the editorial process and familiarity with the range of the art and the possibilities of the language. The emphasis here will be on each student's own words; the goal is to learn how to wield them effectively in a variety of circumstances. Special attention will be paid to eradicating cliché. Boring writing will be questioned and original thinking, accessibly presented, will be reinforced. The final assignment will be to write a riveting personal manifesto about the state of design in America in a manner that will appeal to the uninitiated. [Return to List]
Lecture Series
Visiting scholars, journalists and critics will discuss topics of concern and introduce students to new research, ideas and methods. Some lecturers will discuss practical aspects of their critical endeavors and others will focus on intellectual issues. In addition to helping prepare the program of speakers, students perform the role of designated respondents. The aim of the series is to bring students in contact with a wide variety of professional perspectives and to introduce them to experts in the field. [Return to List]
Radio and Podcast Workshop
Can the subtleties of design be successfully communicated through a non-visual medium? An increasing number of producers, writers and hosts, who create radio programs addressing design, believe it can. This workshop introduces students to the variety of programs currently on air, ranging from focused documentaries and magazine-style formats to host and interviewing situations. Students will then produce their own programs in the form of podcasts. [Return to List]
Print Meets the Web
After the thrill of instant publication has subsided, how do we make online design criticism that is as thoughtful, responsible, and accurate as it is in the best traditional publications? This course will emphasize the role of the design critic and the design blogger as professional journalist, with all the sound practices and valuable resources that title suggests. Students will read and critique design blogs, design-magazine websites, and other online forums alongside published stories from the 68-year archive of Print magazine. As a pivotal and dynamic element of the course, students will write and edit the D-Crit program blog, in which they'll engage actively with the themes and controversies of both print and online writing (from memes to emails to attribution to comments), as well as the semester's other readings and observations. [Return to List]
Short-form Essay and Blog Post Workshop
The short-form essay, written specifically for posting on online magazines and blogs, is a unique format characterized by particular techniques and strategies that differ from those that apply to traditional print journalism. In this intensive workshop students will deconstruct and analyze examples of successful and unsuccessful blog posts. They will then apply their findings through assignments, which will be critiqued both in class and in public. [Return to List]
The Longest (and Heaviest) Form: The Design Book
This course examines book publishing in the design world. Students will investigate related quandaries: What role do books serve in the realm of critical design discourse and how that role is different from those of magazines, journals and even blogs? Who are design books published for and why? Are books simply the longest form of design criticism or is their something different about their content that makes it unique and lasting? Assignments will follow the course of book making, from crafting proposals, researching and targeting the proper audience and assessing a project's commercial viability, to drafting and evaluating sample materials. Students will critique each other's work, debate strategies, and do the necessary research to support their findings. [Return to List]
Magazines Under the Microscope
Each student will consider one publication from two vantage points: the perspective of the cultural, political and economic forces at play in the world into which the publication was born, and the one in which the publication now resides. The student will be expected to understand the language of the American magazine (basic structures of publication design, from the cover and the table of contents to the back page), and will master the language of that magazine (understand its typography, formats, pacing and visual language), from the perspective of its editors, and writers, designers and photo editors, and lastly its readers. Through interviews with editors, art directors, photo editors, writers, and readers, the student will investigate what drove the decision-making process, and subsequently examine a larger culture to determine what role the publication set out to play in society. [Return to List]
Cultural Theory Meets Design
This class introduces students to a range of theoretical models useful for frame discussions of design. The aim is to enable the student to identify when a theoretical model is in use in a text or another form of criticism and to evaluate its appropriateness, coherence and value. Theories to be discussed include: Postmodernism, Feminism and gender studies, sociological studies of consumption and taste, Marxism, and Semiotics and linguistics. [Return to List]
Reviewing a Restaurant Workshop
Students will take field trips to three Manhattan restaurants—one expensive, one medium-cost and one low-priced. At a trip to Julian Schnabel's bar at the Gramercy Hotel, for example, students might talk with a manager from the hotel office about the design process there. At The New York Times cafeteria the class would speak with Manhattan-based interior designers and architects who worked with Renzo Piano on the restaurant's realization. Similarly, at an eatery like Katz's Delicatessen, managers will consult students about the role of architecture and interior design in their restaurant. After eating and experiencing each venue places with all five senses, members of the class will write essays on the interaction of food quality, atmosphere, etiquette and service. [Return to List]
Design Studio Visits/Interviewing Techniques
Interview transcripts offer a rich yet problematic source of insight for the critic. In this workshop, students test out different interviewing approaches, ranging from the journalistic interview to a variety of oral history techniques, from scripted Q and As to more free-form guided conversations. Students will also investigate the qualitative differences between interviews that take place face-to-face versus those conducted over the phone, via email and instant messaging. Regular studio visits help the design critic stay abreast of new work and new thinking in their field. As part of this class, students visit the New York studios of practitioners in a range of disciplines in order to observe makers in their working environments and to practice interviewing skills. [Return to List]
Typologies
As far back as Aristotle, philosophers have understood that insight comes from analyzing what is the same and what is different in classes of objects. Typologies have since shown up in artworks by Andy Warhol, photographs by Bernd and Hilla Becher and in informational graphics by Edward Tufte—all as a means toward deeper comprehension. In this class, students will identify an object, a building or a graphic element and assemble and evaluate variants of it. By looking at types and typeforms (coffee cup lids, magnetic car ribbons, military unit patches, manhole covers around the world) students will learn to identify what doesn't change in a design in order to come closer to its essence. [Return to List]
Thesis Development
Selecting a topic and format that is appropriate, innovative and rich enough to withstand extended inquiry is essential to the success of a final thesis. This course will help students to refine their chosen topics and formats and then prepare a proposal. Students will meet regularly with their thesis advisors. [Return to List]
Thesis Consultation
Working in close consultation with their thesis advisors, students will develop detailed research plans, identify useful archives and sources, and analyze the results of their research. [Return to List]
Thesis Production and Presentation
Each student will complete and present a final thesis–whether it's a video documentary, a Web site, an exhibition or an audio tour. This course will assist in choosing the appropriate tools and techniques for the creation of a thesis project. Students may work in collaboration with graduate students from other departments for the creation of their chosen product. The thesis must be reviewed and approved by thesis committee and the department chair. [Return to List]
Conference Lab
In a public conference devoted to design criticism, graduating students will present papers based on their theses. Students will investigate the conference as a critical medium and will examine some historical examples. They will be involved in all aspects of conference planning and, as a group, will determine the theme of the conference and its keynote speakers. [Return to List]