ETH Singapore Month
The ETH Singapore Month brings together graduate students from different disciplines and universities to tackle contemporary societal and environmental challenges. The workshop, under the heading "The Future of Urban Society," focuses on global urbanization processes in view of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – the latter understood as a modern-day contrat social in need of implementation strategies. Foregrounding the role of design (and design thinking) as a platform for multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary work, students are confronted with so-called "wicked problems" at the global scale.
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Inspired by ETH Zurich's "Critical Thinking Initiative" and particularly the success of "ETH Week," the ETH Singapore Month brings together a group of graduate students from different disciplines and universities to tackle contemporary societal and environmental challenges. The workshop, under the heading "The Future of Urban Society," focuses on global urbanization processes in view of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – the latter understood as a modern-day contrat social in need of implementation strategies.
Foregrounding the role of design (and design thinking) as a platform for multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary work, students are confronted with so-called "wicked problems" – to borrow an expression introduced by design theorists Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber in the early 1970s. Teams of students are asked to deploy their imagination and respective disciplinary knowledge to develop approaches for transferring scientific and technical findings pertaining to societal challenges into applicable propositions. Moving from science and technology to prototyping, policy, and practice, the educational framework aims to foster self-critical thinking and an ethical posture vis-à-vis society at large – via dialogue and playful interaction.
The didactic approach is framed by five input themes that students are asked to simultaneously address: a) one of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals foregrounding a particular global challenge; b) models of governance raising the question of policy and societal organization via well-known board games (chess, go, monopoly, domino, and tarot playing cards); c) a particular theoretical and critical text allowing to situate the work within the history of ideas; d) a specific modeling or prototyping technique addressing the importance of 'making' within design 'thinking' (e.g., laser cutting, 3D-printing, point-cloud scanners, virtual reality goggles, open source software packages, or remote control drone technologies); and e) a certain physical and cultural context within which to ground the work in situ – i.e., the specificity of place.
Whereas the input themes aim to bridge the alleged gaps between theory and practice, the general and the specific, as well as the abstract and the concrete, the output of the work comprises three straightforward components: an exhibition installation, a 20-minute verbal presentation, and a sketchbook documenting the process. Students are asked to present their findings to invited guests from both academia and public agencies at a final review discussion of the work.
The workshop is taking place outside the confines of a familiar setting – namely, within the research environment of Singapore in South East Asia. 48 students – from 7 universities covering 16 disciplines – are asked to work in a design atelier setting in 8 multidisciplinary groups of 6 students each. Lectures and seminars in the morning introduce students to particular questions concerning the future of urban society (demographic change, inequality, migration, human health, environmental degradation, heat-island effects, greenhouse gas emissions, waste management, transportation, access to resources, poverty, governance, etc.). The afternoons are dedicated to the design work in smaller groups addressing one of the United Nations Sustainable Developing Goals. Once a week, a site visit to a particular place, including discussions with government agencies, supplements the program.
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