51-430 RE.Futuring Craft
9 units, Carnegie Mellon University
This project guides students to explore how historical artifacts can serve as tools for emotional reflection and cultural reconstruction. Drawing inspiration from the speculative and critical design practices of Dunne Raby, the course invites students to revisit and reinterpret the past by engaging with objects that bear traces of forgotten functions, lost identities, and overlooked craftsmanship. Rather than approaching design through the conventional lens of usercentered utility and functional optimization, students are encouraged to shift their focus to the object itselfits material presence, imagined voice, and emotional residue. This objectcentered perspective fosters a more imaginative and critical approach, where design becomes a means of speculation and storytelling. By attuning themselves to the quiet narratives embedded within these artifacts, students reimagine their meanings, forms, and functions, placing them in conversation with contemporary cultural contexts. In doing so, they move beyond surface usability to forge empathetic connections grounded in the objects history, ambiguity, and cultural resonance. These reflections ultimately lead to the redesign and physical making of the objects, allowing students to translate speculative interpretations into crafted forms that carry renewed cultural and emotional significance. This course is for CMU Juniors and Senior in the School of Design. Students external to Design must have approved access to a threedimensional prototyping lab and equipment within their home department.
Prerequisites: none listed
Courseweave needs JavaScript to show sections, workloads and planning tools.