Week 2: I think it’s really interesting that although changes to design objects such as the shopping cart has been made, it is so hard to studies version of a product that already works. And how the idea of a cart is formed into the design and the material of cart automatically.
Week 3: Shana talks about conceptual maps. And how words with time seem to gain new meanings such as how the word black has been used negatively so much in the media.
Week 4:
The idea of racialized space and how spaces in DC were designed to impress and represent. The idea of how it’s tied to professionalism but also how design never included the people back then.
Week 5:
two quotes that were brought up in class made me think about how I want to approach my own design practice:
“We don’t need coats, we need jobs “
“Don’t talk about us talk with us”
The idea of how the client which in this case is the community should be involved in the conversation of their own needs. They don’t want a temporary solution they want to be helped in a way that they can be independent.
How do each of these approaches(setting the way it’s imagined impact the people them selves vs imagining the problem as a fundemental issue
Week 6:
Shana brought up an interesting point about giving and taking away power and used himself as an example. Can he remove himself of his own power as a teacher.
Questions about Complex personhood: can different stories be true at the same time?
“We need to know where we live to imagine living elsewhere”
How do we make space for this complexity and still crate something that can be understood by different groups. How do we not insist on boiling the story or a person down without losing the common denominator.
Looking at Lorna Simpson’s work that was displayed in class, her work where she invited a group of people to hum along to a song in isolation and then Lorna groups those videos to create a unified chorus and how each mouth represents an individual interpretation. Which is an interesting piece to look at when discussing complexities in knowledge.
Week 7:
What is the relationship between work and design?
Brody brought an example of a how he opted out housekeeping during the pandemic. And how the role of housekeepers and hotel staff in general has changed in the pandemic.
The idea of gendered distinctions for jobs such as a bellman and a housekeeper. 90% of housekeepers are women. Important to keep in mind that the majority of women doing this work are women of color as well.
The back of the house and the invisibility of Labor and the way these hotels control what they want us to see and what we don’t see.
The quality of a service depends on the what the customer says.
House keeping cart
Interesting to look at housekeeping carts as a design object. How the materials are manipulated to blend with the hotel and the design of the hallway.
Looking at the Ritz Carlton housekeeping videos and the idea that the hard labor of cleaning the room are not shown in the video. You don’t see her cleaning toilets but only showing scenes such as ornaments and bed making. The hotel industry lives in mortal fear of fitted sheets and the reason why they don’t use them is that it makes the bed look more exciting. They are prioritizing the comfort of the customer rather than making the jobs of the housekeepers easy. 80% of Nyc hotels are unionized, if they are doing 15 rooms and approximately 30 beds which means 150 lifts and ticks in their shifts and a lot of injuries happen in bed making.
Another interesting point is the idea of turn down service that happens in the late afternoon where housekeeper comes in and prepares the bed for the night. The bed becomes an object that makes the guest realize that they are in a luxury property.
Housekeeping in relation to service design:
Can renovations cause conflicts? In the cases we looked at in class today we saw how they prioritize design since the new materials and fabrics they put in place were harder to clean and manage.
Exotourism: is this a progressive choice?
Opting out of housekeeping and what happens when you make this “green” choice. They wanted guests to feel like they are making a progressive choice and as a result of that. How does this affect the jobs of housekeepers is something that I want to look into further. What are the problems of the “green” option? The work of the housekeeper is divided in sections which makes the housekeeper’s work more efficient. What happened in Sheraton Kuai was described by the housekeepers in Hawaii as a service design nightmare. They now had to still do their shifts but instead have rooms in different sections of the hotel which makes it even harder to finish these rooms in these shifts. The housekeepers describe cleaning every 3 days a disaster since it became much more labor intensive to make that room clean. This idea of opting from housekeeping to be more “green” made many of the housekeepers loss there jobs and get lashed off because there were not enough shifts anymore.
week 8:
There was a lot to unpack in the opening segment of the the tv show,
Symbolism of the the cross
Equal rights amendment
Women’s faces were crossed our
Religious symbols
Orange green and teal in the flags instead of the traditional colors
Labor turning into flag in animation
Raised fists, pie, flame in hand, bob haircuts and high heels
Are visual themes are repeated through out
Relationship to geography
Talking about the music-Taking something traditional and revamping it and presenting in a new way. The song could be seen as a political stance as it’s a mashup where it’s a conversation between two sides.
The 70s color palette was a conservative pendulum swing from the hippie ethos of the 60’s
The disco ball and the dancing in the beginning places the audience in the 70’s right away
week 9:
Community is sometimes complex a person who was unable religious community and comes about as queer and the religious space might not accept his queerness while his queer community also does not except his beliefs.
Pods interview:
You can have multiple pods
You might have a different pod around taking accountability for white price leave or other pods to support you with queer violence.
It’s important to create pods with people who are local to you especially when looking at violence or crisis.
Start having conversations about how someone could help you in your pod through a crisis or through violence. To think about who those people should be, through shared experience, by location (whoever is closest to you)
Week 10:
the impacts of capitalism colonialism and relationships of power in architecture
as architects we are never taught about the community that builds our projects and how our designs could be discussed with the workers to facilitate for the workers
Design has to offer ways of thinking and approaching the idea itself.
Week 11:
Seeing fashion as informal networks of connections
Connecting arc and fashion
It was interesting to see how she came from Korean parents who worked in and out the garment district
Labor is not always spoken, it’s forms of communication
It takes a whole community to produce the things we actually wear rather than a designer
Looking Fashion as material intamacy
How clothing can embody communities and geographies
Can you see clothes as a physical and geographic mapping of different parts of the city
How you can map stitching to particular communities
It’s interesting to see the invisible infrastructure be analyzed and made visible in these clothes.
What kind of identities and dreams can you achieve while wearing the clothing vs the aspirations of those making the work.
Week 12:
Week 13;
Because of capitalism there are still tested investments to keep a labor force that is heirchachal to keep those who are undocumented and those with a criminal record.
week 14:
The policing crisis by Stuart hall is interesting because it focused on the type of analysis they did and also paved the way for thinking of thinking of the cultural production of meaning. In the book they take a cultural studies approach to phenomenon that was happening in the moment. An interesting point in the book was the adoption of the word mugging by the police
They argue that although history is important to understand how we got to where we are but it’s more important to analyze what is going on in the moment.
And so the biggest focus is why is the word mugging being talked about despite not even existing in the british lexicon before?
last week: we talked about transformative justice again in relation to the students reading articles about her lying about heritage and benefiting off of their culture. We also discussed the biggest themes that we were interested in and the biggest themes that showed up were transformative justice, invisible infrastructures and community.
