Week 2.1 discussion was about Design Fiction.

So what is Design Fiction? As I understand it Design Fiction is a practice that allows each individual to think and work with a set of future expectations while producing ideas. The reading that caught my attention was by Eva Knutz, which talks about Design Fiction within Design, Art & Architechture. In her article Knutz states ‘ever since the advent of modern design, designers have used fiction as a technique for experimenting with alternative models for society or for criticizing existing ones’.

‘This imaginary urban projects of the Futurists proposed a city where machines enables new forms of architecture and infrastructure’.

The one that i find interesting was in one sub criteria that elaborates on Utopian Experiments in Architecture, Art & Design.

Utopias have existed since the beginning of humanity. Utopia is a community or society possessing highly desirable or perfect qualities. The questions spurring the construction of utopias are timeless:

How to make the world better? How can we be living differently, with different economics system, scientific progress, human evolution, different political aspect – and perhaps new values?

Below briefly present a series of Design fiction projects. One example, the highly experimental buildings by Michael Reynolds, build from recycled materials, operating off the formal electricity grid, requiring little money to build.

I was in Kuala Lumpur for a month before returning back to Melbourne. Even tho it’s SO NICE to be on holiday, see my family and eat different yummy food and be disconnected from uni and work, there’s nothing like the feel of your own bedsheets on your skin and full knowledge that the thread count is exactly to your suiting.

Don’t get me wrong, I am from Malaysia and Malaysia is my home but after living in Melbourne for the past 5 years i consider Melbourne to be my current home. All you international students out there, i’m sure you’d understand where i’m coming from.

I have to say being back in Melbourne feels so good. It would be better if i wasn’t experiencing such bad jet lag, so that i could be sleeping peacefully on those bedsheets instead of lying awake in the dark for 2 hours before giving up and watch criminal minds instead .

I even napped for only two hours this afternoon so i’d be robbed of body clock sleep and yet i JUST CAN’T SLEEP. Oh, and i slept real little on the plane too. My sister slept so much more on the plane, took the same nap as me, and feel dead asleep at midnight -_-

Despite thinking i’d pass out upon returning home, the OCD in me couldn’t stop myself from unpacking and doing the laundry. God i’m just looking at all the stuff around me in my tiny apartment. I have so much shit – everything everywhere… 5 years worth of junk. All these furniture, clothes and more clothes.

I really need to start organizing and donating the things i no longer need. Space. It would definitely be my new priority.

Adrian Miles’ reading made me have a bit of a lightbulb moment about what this course is about/ aiming to do. The idea is about using a blog to engage in a different style of contemporary learning. It links in nicely with that other confusing reading about different approaches to learning such as double loop learning.

Having a blog allows you to think out your ideas and implement this whole concept of “The Takeaway Idea”. You can easily record your ideas, reflections, thoughts, activities and ramblings and develop your individual online persona. There’s the knowledge that your blog will be read by others and the notion of belonging to a community of other bloggers.

I love writing and the idea of blogging and am hoping this course can make me become a more successful blogger. I’d love to produce more original content for my personal blog rather than simply re-blogging work published on other sites. While I get the occasional comments from members of the blogging world I really want to learn how to maximise this interaction!