Care Futures
In times of demographic and technological structural change, the term care assumes increasing importance in various stages of life. Acceleration, changing values and digital transformation processes raise questions regarding mental and physical health. Individuality and collectivity as well as issues such as loneliness, the meaning of life and the end of life are reassessed in this context. “Care futures” conducts interprofessional research from multiple perspectives and cooperates with institutions such as Pro Juventute, the Centre for Palliative Care (Waid City Hospital Zurich) and other end-of-life institutions in Switzerland. Research is currently focused on adolescence and the end of life. The key questions are: What might possible care scenarios look like? And what role can and must care design play now and in the future?
Fashion theory and history
The focus here is on analysing fashion history as design history. The approach taken is to treat clothing as an aspect of material culture, and to analyse its relationships with body and gender, with technologies, materials and representation in the media. Product cycles play an important part here, from creation through to production and distribution and consumption. The research also draws on theoretical and methodological approaches to fashion as a phenomenon. Multidisciplinary perspectives are applied, with the inclusion of approaches from art history, sociology, economic history and media studies.
Lifestyle and identities
The research focus here is on everyday life, everyday environments, mainstream phenomena and their material cultures, asking a number of key questions: What meanings are attributed to things? What functions do they perform? And how do they inform and alter the ways people behave (society of things)? This research focus applies and experiments with ethnographic methods such as participative philosophy, netnography and cultural probes. Data is compiled by designers and design researchers exposing themselves, and their bodies and personalities, to a different social field. The goal is to reflect critically on the things in our everyday world and culture that define our identity.
More information on Trends & Identity research projects, conferences and publications.
Head of Research Focus
Prof. Bitten Stetter