Design Histories Beyond Euro-America: Worlds, Canons, and Counter-Narratives

This seminar rethinks design histories through the deliberate unlearning of Euro-American modernity as the default frame of reference.
It interrogates how canonical historiographies have constructed 'design' as an industrial, Western project while marginalizing vernacular practices, craft epistemologies, regenerative systems, and alternative material cultures. The seminar also explores the historical boundaries of what counts as design, who counts as a designer, and which objects enter the canon, and which were left outside.
Positioning design history as a geo-politically entangled field - the course examines how colonial modernity, extractivism, petro-materiality, and global supply chains have shaped dominant narratives of progress and innovation. In contrast, it foregrounds counter-narratives emerging from the Global South and other historically peripheralized contexts, design worlds that demand different periodizations, and different criteria of significance.

The course is grounded in case studies spanning architecture, fashion, craft, object and graphic systems approached through the methods of design history: object analysis, and historiographical critique.

The seminar begins with the question: How do we move beyond the canon, toward the worlds and counter-narratives that design history has left out?

• Attendance: Attendance at the first session is mandatory. A minimum of 80% attendance is required throughout the course.
• Participation (15%): Active and thoughtful participation in all online-class discussions, Q&A sessions, and academic readings is expected. Assessment will consider students’ preparation, contribution to discussions, engagement with course materials, and critical/intellectual exchange.
• Visual Essay (40%): Students will select a design object, artefact, or designed thing from a museum, archive, or credible online collection, with particular attention to underrepresented, vernacular, local, Indigenous, peripheral, or otherwise overlooked design histories. The selected object will serve as a point of departure for bringing together and critically reflecting on the histories, concepts, and perspectives explored throughout the course. Submission: January 12, 2027
• Final Group Presentation (45%): A collaborative final presentation that synthesizes & applies the key themes and concepts,  explored throughout the course.The final presentation may build upon the themes explored in the visual essay. Examination: January 21 & 26, 2027
• Further details of Visual Essay, and Final presentation will be introduced in the third session and provided on Base.

This year, this course will take place online. 13:00-15:30 Vienna time on scheduled dates. 

The language of instruction for this course is English.