Re-flex: Responsive Flexible Mold for Computer Aided Intuitive Design and Materialization

The paper presents an ongoing research about the design and a possible use of a responsive flexible mold. The mold is developed by integrating its precedents with automation and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). The objective of the design is to provide an immersive design tool which has direct link to fabrication. It allows intuitive...

Design for Well-Being: An Approach for Understanding Users' Lives in Design for Development

Many of the Design for Development outcomes which are unsuited to the users and their environment are based on poorly defined needs and preferences. Product designers are trained to take the user perspective into account, but they are not specifically trained to conduct ethnographic research. Thereby, they have limited time and resources to...

Using the capability approach to detect design opportunities

When developing products and services to improve the well-being of the multidimensional poor, designers need deep contextual insight. However, literature does not specify which topics to discuss or which questions to ask. We used Sen’s capability approach to develop question categories and specific questions, and we selected tools to support...

Approaching design for development from a capability perspective

To improve the well-being of disadvantaged and marginalized populations by product design, deep contextual insight is required. However, literature does not specify which topics to discuss or which questions to ask. To address this issue, we used Sen’s capability approach to develop question categories and adopted a semi-structured interview...

How to Teach ‘New Tools’ in Landscape Architecture in the Digital Overload

The central theme of the paper is the introduction of hands-on tools showing the integration of information technology within a postgraduate study program (MAS LA) for landscape architects. What has already become a part of the discourse in the field of architecture – generic design – is now also finding more resonance in the context of large...

Scripting Design Supported by Feedback Loop from Structural Analysis

In order to support an architect’s decision to evaluate and choose more efficient structural solutions in the concept design, it is necessary to establish an interactive feedback loop between structural solver and geometry modeller which would allow one to analyse a great number of solutions generated in the scripting design process. Defining a...

Taking a Capability Approach to Technology and Its Design: A Philosophical Exploration

What people are realistically able to do and be in their lives, their capabilities, are of central moral importance according to the capability approach (CA) of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. Examples are the capabilities to be healthy or to be part of a community. The CA has become an influential normative framework for reflecting on justice,...

A Tool for the Design of Facilities for the Sustainable Production of Knowledge

The aim of the study is to develop a ‘design tool’, that is a method to enhance the design and planning of facilities for the sustainable production of new knowledge. More precisely, the objective is to identify a method to support the conception of building complexes related to the long-term production of new knowledge. The tool is focused on...

Design and development of a prototype inland vessel provided with fuel cell power generation