Abstract
Both practice and education in clothing design in Latin American countries such as Colombia, have been focused on the stylistic production of forms directed towards accelerated consumption, under the premises of fashion trends. Consequently, different social problems centered in the relation body-artifact are left behind, especially those from minority groups, like the people who live in poverty, disability, rural contexts, and forced displacement, amongst others. These conditions require an approach from clothing design that addresses, not only the operational and functional aspects, but also those linked to an understanding from the intuitive, affective and emotional factors of their surrounding world.
This paper shows the outcomes of several projects carried out by the Faculty of Clothing Design at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana. They have focused on the improvement of various human conditions like literacy, civics and communal living of children, teenagers and adults who coexist in violent contexts. It also shows the outcomes of projects where the creation and use of wardrobe devices work as collective memory reconstruction processes with victims of the armed conflict, and self-management processes with communities to identify and let them participate in their own needs resolution.
These projects use different methodologies that appeal to literature reviews and interviews with experts, while the class is taken to the place where the communities coexist and carry out their everyday routine. It is here where the design students and teachers join the daily activities of the different groups in participant and non-participant observations, audio-visual record, statistical study of the population and characterization of the communities, as well as an analysis of the devices and environments where their daily life takes place. We find, then, outcomes that are artefacts working as narratives which suggest a different way of telling the story of our Country.
These projects’ development and outcomes are the result of a co-creative and empathic job amongst the different communities, the teachers and students from the Faculty of Clothing Design. The aforementioned has fostered feelings of affective participation among the different participants of the projects, thus, linking subjects and practices.
The development of this project and its results also raise different considerations about the teaching of design in Colombia, strongly related to the more contemporary positions of human centered design, critical design, autonomous design, and design for behavioral change, all which appeal to the commitment design professionals have with the people, their contexts and their particular situations.
Keywords
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
National Administrative Statistics Department in Colombia.
- 2.
Gini coefficient is an inequality measurement created by Conrado Gini. It is used to measure the inequality in a country’s income. 0 indicates total equality and 1 the maximum inequality. So, having a value of 0.517 –close to 1– indicates that there is inequality in the country. Colombia is in the 7th place in the world based on inequality, according to the World Bank.
- 3.
The notion of embodiment, defined by the anthropologist Csordas [5] has as its premise a relation between perception and practice from the concepts of pre-objective (Merleau-Ponty) and habitus (Bordieau). These authors are also analyzed by the sociologist Entwistle [6] to suggest an understanding of clothing that takes into account that while it is being a social and individual experience, it is also a phenomenon that evolves around discourse and practice.
- 4.
Styling is a concept used to refer to one of design’s philosophies that emphasizes on making products that are attractive to the consumer in order to be able to sell it. This philosophy is opposed to functionalism and its main representatives was the the American industrial designer, Raymond Loewy.
- 5.
This kind of research was created by Orlando Fals Borda, in the 1970s, for educational environments. In the Faculty of Clothing Design, we have transferred it to the co-design process.
- 6.
8 commune in Medellin is located east in the city and has extreme poverty conditions. That is the reason why its population are in a high vulnerability position.
References
Escobar, A.: Autonomía y Diseño: la Realización de lo Comunal. Universidad del Cauca, Colombia (2016)
Norman, D.: La Psicología de los Objetos Cotidianos. Nerea, Madrid (1990)
Fundación Prodintec: Diseño Afectivo e Ingeniería Kansei: Guía Metodológica, Asturias (2011)
Jordan, P.: Designing Pleasurable Products: an Introduction to the New Human Factors. Taylors & Francis, London (2000)
Csordas, T.: Introduction: the Body as Representation and Being-in the World. Thomas Csordas, Cambridge (1994)
Entwistle, J.: Fashion and The Fleshy Body: Dress as Embodied Practice. Fashion Theory, London (2000)
Van Rompay, T., Ludden, G.: Types of Embodiment in Design: the Embodied Foundations of Meaning and affect in Product Design. Department of Product Design, Netherlands (2015)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this paper
Cite this paper
Fernández-Silva, C., Echeverri-Jaramillo, Á.M., Vélez-Granda, S.M. (2019). Empathy and Design. Affective Participations for Clothing Design in Colombia. In: Fukuda, S. (eds) Advances in Affective and Pleasurable Design. AHFE 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 774. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94944-4_22
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94944-4_22
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-94943-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-94944-4
eBook Packages: Intelligent Technologies and RoboticsIntelligent Technologies and Robotics (R0)