Over the past ten years of my pedagogical journey, I’ve consistently turned to Critical and Speculative Design as a method for engaging design students beyond function and form. It’s become a core tool—not just to teach them how to think critically and research with depth, but to introduce what I call a “manufacturing language”: a nuanced understanding of how material, process, and assembly communicate meaning. Now, as an Associate Professor at Pratt Institute, I’m proud to expand this approach further—using design not as an end, but as a medium. A way of thinking. A way of asking.

To me, design is a language. Like poetry, it can be composed—material becomes metaphor, joinery becomes syntax. In the classroom, I encourage students to use the language of industrial design—one often seen as technical or utilitarian—as a poetic form of communication. Through this lens, design becomes a way to articulate questions that don't always seek answers, but invite new kinds of awareness.

This semester, we explored this through a project rooted in flânerie—the act of wandering as a sensory and reflective experience. Drawing from the figure of the flâneur, and more specifically the flâneuse, we examined how design might emerge from embodied observation. The flâneuse, unlike her historically passive male counterpart, engages the city not with detachment, but with deep sensory presence. Inspired by Marie Bashkirtseff’s longing for freedom and creative exploration, we turned the everyday act of commuting into a design prompt.

Students were asked to map their journey from home to Pratt and identify a “third space”: a moment or place that stirred emotion, curiosity, or wonder—be it the smell of fresh bread from a corner bakery, the sharp wind between subway cars, or the rhythm of footsteps on a staircase. From this moment, they designed a portable object that enhances and shares that sensory experience with others.

This was not about solving a problem. It was about using design as a medium for inquiry, for speculation, for expression. The object had to function, had to be manufacturable and materially coherent. But its purpose could be poetic, even absurd—so long as it communicated a sensory point of view.

This way of teaching—and of thinking about design—invites students to reimagine what it means to make. We design not to fix, but to ask better, stranger, more unexpected questions. We design to see what’s been overlooked. We design to give form to the spaces in between.

José de la O, December 2025

“Anticipation” by Joshua Cruz.

Our commutes are filled with sonic “omens”: the whir of a freewheel before a cyclist passes, the beat of footsteps on wet ground before a runner emerges, the distant roar of a plane moments before it appears overhead. These are fleeting sounds, subtle warnings or quiet invitations that signal what’s about to arrive.

What if an artifact could make these anticipatory signals more tangible? This project proposes a multidirectional sonic capturing device that allows the user to isolate and tune into these ephemeral cues, discerning the approach of a bike rider, the passing of a jogger along the edge of Prospect Park, or the overhead trajectory of an unseen aircraft.

By transforming ambient noise into a curated sensory experience, the artifact invites a slower, more attentive mode of being in the city. Not as a passive listener, but as a sonic flâneur—someone who wanders not just through space, but through sound. In doing so, it offers an alternative way to contemplate the phenomena of the park and the choreography of urban life through a heightened awareness of its acoustic ecology.