Professor
E-mail: johan.redstrom@umu.se
Phone: +46 90 786 76 89
Mobile: +46 72 513 61 90
Johan Redström joined UID as professor of design in 2012, and
has been responsible for the PhD programme and research direction
at UID. Between 2015 and 2018, he was Rector of UID.
Background
Coming into design was for me initially the result of a
collision: on one side music, on the other philosophy. After
studies in both areas (and some more), I ended up as a PhD student
in philosophy but in parallel still experimenting with interactive
and electronic music. But then I was recruited to a new research
group working with applied research on art and technology (Göteborg
University). This work, basically what we now call interaction
design, for me turned out to be a perfect combination of projects
together with industrial partners, design experimentation and
practice-based research, and in 2001 I defended my PhD thesis
called 'Designing Everyday Computational Things'. Since then I have
primarily been doing and directing design research at the
Interactive Institute, I've been adjunct professor at the School of
Textiles at the University of Borås, Sweden, and associate research
professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of
Architecture, Denmark.
What I do at UID
As professor in design, I teach and do research (see
below).
Teaching
Since I joined UID, most of my teaching as been at PhD level.
Developing a new curriculum for the PhD programme, I developed a
set of basic courses in design research that I also have been
teaching. Among the areas are research methodology in artistic and
practice-based design research, philosophy and design, and most
recently a course on design history. I also supervise PhD students
(currently 8).
Research
In general, my research has been centred on experimental and
critical design practices, and on theory development in the context
of practice-based research. I'm interested in prototyping new
design practices as a response to post-industrial conditions and
contemporary challenges such as sustainable development. Over time,
I have also learned that prototyping new 'practices' in this sense
(unlike doing design projects) require a lot of work on the
artistic and conceptual foundations of design. For instance, what
does 'form' actually refer to when we're talking about acts and
processes rather than shape and object? Intuitively, we may know
that basic notions such as form and material are as important as
ever, but how do we understand and articulate what they has now
become? Asking such basic, almost philosophical, questions in the
context of practice I find most interesting.
Publications
