48-445 Design Consciousness: Working with Diverse Populations
9 units, Carnegie Mellon University
Architectural designers are often positioned as the individual genius, who can solve all problems through design. This attitude is antithesis to those who want to design through a social justice practice. A social justice practice requires designers to work with diverse groups of people, whether they are coworker, community members, or individual clients. This course focuses on a design practice working with diverse populations focusing on human behavior in the environment, lenses for conceptualizing problems and interventions. The course will also focus on social practice with particular attention to issues of power, oppression, and privilege. This course will introduce you to a set of powerful tools that will help you understand complex systems that control human behavior at di@erent scales (macro, mezzo, micro), using di@erent theoretical lens to find solutions, and build empathy by having a better understanding of people's lived experiences. The course aims to develop students' cultural humility and structural competence. To develop cultural humility, we spend time critically reflecting on our own experiences, assumptions, and biases. The practice of self-reflection helps prepare us to work competently and e@ectively with people from a variety of backgrounds, and social locations. Structural competence will be cultivated by learning about power, oppression, and institutions. Developing an understanding of how inequities are built into our societal structures and communities. We acknowledge that the learning we begin in this course is just the beginning of the life-long learning required to be a social justice designer who practices with cultural humility and structural competence.
Prerequisites: 48-240
Offered: Fall 2025
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