Felix's Documentation of Teaching at NYUAD

Please check the Daily Schedule for Jan. 6–23 (incl. homework and due dates), the course calendar,
and the themes/dates for Case-Study Presentations, and the different topics for student groups for Field-Trip Report.
Check out this interview about the course in The Sustainabilist (or find one of the 120,000 circulated copies. ).

What would a world without plastic look like? How does the world look because of it? Plastic Fantastic looks critically at plastic's ubiquity in global consumer cultures. Students will consider plastic’s predecessors and contemporary alternatives and engage with a range of topics, from the environmental politics of plastic debris in oceans, to the ethics and values of plastic surgery, to the proliferation of cheap plastic toys and fashion trends. Based on these discussions, and inspired by the original meaning of the Greek term plastikos (to grow, to form), the class will develop and create a product using recycled plastic waste in NYUAD’s Plastic Recycling Research Lab. In addition to the completed project, to be displayed in an exhibition at the January Term’s end, students will leave with a personal philosophy of Art, Design, and Technology as well as a sense of how mutually reinforcing and beneficiary a mix of these fields can be for future problem solving. Mandatory field-trips include visits to relevant industries (water, oil, waste, etc.), natural reserves, and landfill sites in the UAE and the Philippines (Manila).

The course Plastic Fantastic !? is a Core Competency Course in the field of Art, Design, and Technology. This course teaches students to think critically and work creatively toward innovations in arts practice, design and engineering, creative writing, data visualisation, programming, and performance. Guest lecturers as well as interdisciplinary co-teaching plays an important role in this course. The course is cross-listed with the Multi-/disciplinary Minor Design (counts as Design Elective).

Students in the course will learn to develop analytical and critical thinking skills and be trained in problem analysis and concept development. As the project contains practical components, students will also be trained in the use of several low-cost plastic recycling machines like plastic shredder, injection or extruder.

At the end of this course, students will…

• Have articulated ways in which plastic creation and consumption relates to major ethical issues of our time,
• Have discussed ways of rising awareness on the global impact of plastic waste on ecosystems,
• Have a basic understanding on waste management and plastic recycling,
• Value plastic as a precious and not as a one-time-use/throw-away material.

These outcomes will be assessed through class participation, in-class exercises, project presentation and documentation as described below.

This course is a mix of theory and practice. Students will be involved in a lot of reading, discussion and writing, as well as the completion of a practical project, and several national and international excursions.


This course adopts a seminar format that requires students to participate actively in class discussions. Considerable class time will be spent on presentations and discussions of related art and design projects, and lectures/case-studies on different technological aspects. Site visits, field trips, and hands-on workshop sessions are embedded into the daily themes of the course. Students are expected to read and research about a substantial number of projects, participate in classroom discussions, and develop a concept for a project. Each student is required to conceptualise a final project of a topic of their choosing that goes deeper into issues beyond what was discussed in class. The aim of the project is to develop an innovative product/object that displays the conceptual and technical intellectuality of the student. Daily presentations and ethical discussions of cases provide the groundwork for students to prepare an Artistic Statement.

The course makes use of the online site NYU Classes that will serve as a repository for required readings, assignments, and additional course materials. Class discussions will be supplemented by multimedia material such as Keynote/Powerpoint slides and video clips.

• Plastic: A Toxic Love Story, Susan Freinkel, Boston, 2011
• The Upcycle, Beyond Sustainability - Designing for Abundance, McDonough, Braungart, 2013
• Sustainable Materials, Processes and Production, Rob Thompson, 2013 ⇐ the book was not available so that the following book was ordered by the book-store: Manufacturing Processes for Design Professionals, Rob Thompson, 2018

Supplemental texts from the following ebooks (available via NYUClasses):

• Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World,
 Eugenie Samuel Reich, 2010
• Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming, Dunne, Raby, Cambridge, 2013
• The Art of Critical Making, Somerson, Hermano, Hoboken, 2013
• The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman, New York, 2013
• The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design, IDEO.org, 2015

• Understanding Plastic Recycling: Economic, Ecological, and Technical Aspects of Plastic Waste Handling, Natalie Rudolph, Raphael Kiesel, Chuanchom Aumnate, Munich, 2017

• A Plastic Ocean, We need a Wave of Change, 2016
• Plastic Change, Episodes: 1–9, 2018
• Plastic Surgery, Forever Young: Facelifts, BBC, 2016

As supplemental materials there will be a wide range of online video resources and project documentation. Links will be shared via NYU Classes or other online sites (t.b.a.).

1. The story of Barbie and the Woman Who Created Her
2. Masters of the Universe: The story of He-Man and She-Ra

3. Before plastics: Drinks from bottles and straws
4. Before plastics: Chopsticks and cutlery
5. The origin of oil in the Jurassic era
6. Oil production in the 18th century
7. Top 10 supertanker disasters and pipeline crashes
8. Spaceship Earth
9. 3D printing with Makerbot and Ultimaker
10. Fashion design by Anouk Wiprecht
11. Fast fashion brands: H&M and Zara
12. Less but better (Dieter Rams Ten Rules on Good Design)
13. Death by Design
14. Bakelite
15. The Monobloc Chair

Students must complete all assigned coursework in order to pass the course. All required documents must be submitted electronically via NYU Classes. No extensions will be given on assignments or papers without sufficient extenuating circumstances and prior approval from the instructor. Any two missing classes will result in (-) minus point automatically. A grading rubrik will be available via NYU Classes.

If you like something enough to use it in your thinking and writing, you must identify your source for that thing. This includes phrases, sentences, passages, images, charts, diagrams, YouTube clips or anything else you did not create yourself. But this also includes ideas that are not your own. Anything that does not come from your own thinking mind must be cited. The faculty instructing this course will not tolerate cheating or plagiarism. When academic dishonesty is suspected, it will be dealt with in adherence to the official guidelines of New York University Abu Dhabi.

https://students.nyuad.nyu.edu/campus-life/student-policies/community-standards-policies/academic-integrity/