The Design of Trade

This lecture series/seminar looks at trade as an under discussed topic in the field of design and underestimated in its ramifications and impacts, within trade agreements, trade routes, taxes, costs, power imbalances and ecological changes. Furthermore, design is often understood on the surface as an activity producing more or less useful or ornamental things - outside the scope of its entanglements with questions of policy, trade, labor, gender, resources, power structures. Yet,designers can hold an agenda in these matters and designed artefacts and systems can affect how people live, communicate and act. This seminar thus proposes to uncover the material dimension of politics. Through case studies, observations of situations, film excerpts, exercises, guest lectures and essays, we will look at those entanglements as well as address systems that may not seem 'designed' as such but that present components of being planned and organised for a particular purpose. 

Guest Lecturers have included:

- Dr Cassandra Thiesen-Mark, Universität Basel on "the History and Empowerment of West African Workers"
- Prof Dr Harald Fischer-Tiné, Institut für Geschichte, ETH on "India’s shifting place in the world wide web of cotton, c. 1600-1950"
- Mi You, Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln on "the Silk Road: Old and New Networks"