Industrial Design

HS 2024

The Protoyping Ecologies module is run between the Master Industrial Design and Master Interaction Design courses. It is led by Lukas Franciszkiewicz and Rasa Weber.

In 1775, Alexander Cummings invented the S-bend pipe—a convenient curvature of ontological space that promised to separate humans from their bodily waste, rendering waste invisible and, seemingly, irrelevant. Ecological theorist Timothy Morton writes:

"For some time we may have thought that the U-bend in the toilet was a convenient curvature of ontological space that took whatever we flush down it into a totally different dimension called Away, leaving things clean over here. Now we know better: instead of the mythical land Away, we know the waste goes to the Pacific Ocean or the wastewater treatment facility... There is no Away on this surface, no here and no there."

— Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects, University of Minnesota Press, 2013

Today, we live in a world where this technological sleight of hand has spectacularly failed. The waste does not disappear into a mythical "Away" — it contaminates our oceans, our soil, our bodies, our futures. The question remains: how can we design for and live in ecosystems and worlds after the illusion of separation has collapsed? How can we straighten the S-bend and confront our waste, integrating the here and the there?

In this project, we attempt to straighten the S-bend and confront our waste, integrating the here and the there. In doing so, we interrogate urgent questions that demand our attention: Why do India's deprived communities still defecate outdoors? Why do we insist on infantilising our bathroom products? Is promoting the genderless public toilet a sufficient outcome? And when did the nappy become such a contentious object?

The S-bend represents not merely a plumbing device, but a foundational separation between humans and the material realities of their own existence. It exemplifies how design has historically served to obscure, sanitise, and distance us from the ecological consequences.

The seminar is a three-week design project that positions prototyping as a primary means of ecological inquiry. Through hands-on making, material experimentation, and iterative prototyping, you will develop tactile and imaginative responses to the theme of the module. Prototypes can be treated as testing rigs, proposed solutions or as critical instruments—as research objects, thought experiments, and provocations that allow us to imagine alternative relationships between humans, non-humans, and environments. By working directly with materials, you will engage in embodied learning that moves beyond representation, generating tangible models that test ideas, reveal assumptions, and open new possibilities for designing with and within ecological entanglements.

Tutors: Lukas Franciszkiewicz & Rasa Weber