Transition Design

Design Philosophy Papers, 2015

Egyptian students at a private university in Cairo that has the mission of propagating German scientific thinking to the elites of Egypt.

Cultural Spaces and Design - Prospects of Design Education, 2019

Halter, Regine & Walthard, Catherine (Eds.) for HyperWerk HGK FHNW Throughout the discussions about globalisation and design, what has been missing until now are deliberations regarding necessary changes towards a design education which puts conceptual acting in the context of global movements and problem situations. This publication pleads for a revision of design education. It addresses students, teachers, and design practitioners. On the basis of concrete examples, concepts, methods and tools are presented for discussion. They can open up new directions and possibilities of design education. Consequently, this book focuses on design students’ experiences and reflections as contributions to a design education understood as a school for differentiated perception. The local level – the respective Cultural Space – is appreciated as the actual hot spot of globalisation. The book offers reports, case studies, analyses, and reflections by lecturers, artists, and students about their working experiences in Uzbekistan, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, New Zealand, Poland, Nigeria, Botswana, South Sudan, India, Canada, Albania, the USA and others.

fa.utl.pt

Luís Romão Faculty of Architecture, TU Lisbon Rua Sá Nogueira, Polo Universitário, Alto da Ajuda, 1349-055 Lisboa, Portugal; [email protected] ... Rita Assoreira Almendra Faculty of Architecture, TU Lisbon Rua Sá Nogueira, Polo Universitário, Alto da Ajuda, 1349-055 ...

Dubai has been labeled the emerging urban prototype: car-oriented and post-industrial, a decentralized city in which everything—roads, buildings, consumer goods—is recent. Once stable aspects of tradition in the UAE are transforming amidst swift urban development and influences from large expatriate communities. The graphic design profession has been imported from abroad, along with foreign idioms that saturate the contemporary visual environment. Dubai’s compressed development has circumvented the evolution of visual language systems beyond the iconic. This is evident in the work of design students who struggle with contextualizing and manipulating signifying elements germane to their circumstance. There now exist a number of schools in the UAE that educate prospective design professionals who will increasingly participate in local practice. To move beyond the language of generic catchphrases and stock-imagery, future designers need a formal and intellectual toolset to challenge the existing dynamic, elusive, and fantastic physical reality. Most importantly, they must experience the activity of design as responsive to the local culture. At the American University of Sharjah, in order to sustain critical practice, we assign projects that examine visual communication through; identification, deconstruction, and intervention. Identification involves the collection and categorization of familiar design outcomes: publications, ads, retail signs, etc. Deconstruction involves extracting semantic associations from a collection of mundane objects; focusing on identifying the potential of objects to function as signs. Intervention requires a visual and verbal response to the experienced environment. The projects allow students to experience the relationship between form/format, content/container, practice/context. In a place known for its lack of permanence, such activities help students fix aspects of their environment, generating a narrative history about the local design profession. Instead of a generic language of anonymity, students gain abilities to construct visual languages of significance and specificity.

2018

On the first day of my PhD induction, Professor Les Back told a room full of new students "Be prepared to dance and wrestle with your PhD". The experience could not be described in any other way. Despite it being your PhD, there are many people who share the process of dancing and wrestling with it. I would first like to thank Gunalan Nadarajan and Mike Weikert who encouraged me to apply to a PhD. Mike, your passion for design and education were a significant inspiration, and I cannot thank you enough for introducing me to Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I would also like to thank Samer Abdelnour who helped with my application and in providing a support network during my first year in London. My deepest gratitude to my supervisor Kay Stables, for her patience, and her attention to detail and professionalism. The learnings I gathered from her provide me with inspiration every time I enter the classroom, and this work would not be possible without her guidance. I would also like to thank my secondary supervisor Terry Rosenberg for his support throughout the process. Throughout my five years at Goldsmiths, I am lucky to have experienced multiple studio/office mates in the Design department. I started in 14 Laurie Grove and end my journey in 13 Laurie Grove! I would particularly like to thank Alexandra Antonopoulou, Maria Portugal, Sarah Pennington and Bianca Elzenbaumer for their friendship and constructive feedback on my work. A big thank you to Morgan Bach at the Design office for all her help in making the write-up process smoother. I would also like to thank Bill Gaver and Alex Wilkie for their efforts in crafting a research environment, and Steve Keirl for his feedback on methods and cheerfully checking in on my progress. 4 possible nor successful. Many of the ideas, questions and methods within this research are shaped by the individuals I have engaged with through Kalimat. I would also like to thank my peers and the faculty at MICA, who developed my design sensibility. This work would not have been possible without the participants of this research. Every single person I interviewed, attended a focus group, listened to my talk, or participated in the charrettes contributed immensely to this work, and provided me with inspiration and motivation. Your contributions have provided me with material for three PhDs, and I am forever grateful for your faith in me and the value you saw in my work. I would also like to thank Dima Hanna for lending me her space Hayyez to conduct the charrettes, and to the organisers of Amman Design Week who helped me put together the event at Darat Al-Funun. I would also like to thank Noura Al-Khasawneh for opening her 'rolodex' and introducing me to valuable participants. My sincere thanks to my grandparents Fatima and Hilmi and my uncle Salim for housing me, feeding me and at times driving me while in Jordan, and for their curiosity in my research. For the past couple of years, I have had the pleasure of being part of Decolonising Design. These brilliant scholars have provided me with a sense of community during this lonely process, have opened my mind to so many ideas, and their brilliance encourages me to better myself every day. To

Art & Design Education in Times of Change (Edition Angewandte) 1st Edition, 2017

This paper considers the future of design education from the perspective of the designer who was not born in, will not be educated in, nor will practice in North America or Europe. What is the relevance of design education based on the curriculum of Ulm or that of the Bauhaus to the designer born today (or in the future) in an emerging country? The importance of a “homegrown” curriculum is emphasized through reference to Usain Bolt and Jamaica’s international track and field success. The developing world is not a homogenous space, and this paper focuses on the socio-economic context of three groups of vulnerable developing countries: Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS). What should the curriculum of the design student include in these contexts? Should the education of designers in emerging economies be different? A model for design education in developing countries is presented in the conclusion, as well as recommendations for curricula focus at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels.

By its very nature, industrial design education tries to be in close contact with the industry. Design academics try to foresee the future needs of the industry and revise the existing education programs accordingly. As industrial design education is traditionally structured to address the general needs of mainly large manufacturing companies, its sphere of interest does not commonly cover the economic and social problems pertaining to certain contexts and localities. This has been especially the experience of industrial design education in countries like Turkey as its establishment accompanied the modernization process of those countries. In these countries, the design education's links with the local context have been weak and the conditions existing on the ground have usually been ignored by design academics as they were expected to change as a consequence of the industrial and cultural development process that they would go through in time (Er and Kaya, 2008; Er and Er, 2006). This situation started to change mainly due to the enormity of the challenges ahead of the countries resulting from socioeconomic and environmental problems. These problems force design education to re-interpret its mission and broaden its scope of interest as to contribute to the achievement of sustainable development. On the other hand, the specific nature of the problems to the local contexts requires the development of specific solutions to those contexts. This paper reports an example of design education's engagement with the problems and challenges pertaining to a specific locality. The particular engagement consists of a diagnosis study to identify the nature of a productive network in a district of historical significance in Istanbul. The study constitutes a part of a series of activities to increase the visibility of the positive qualities of the district and to explore how design and design thinking can help in generating viable proposals for their survival and upgrading.

Architecture cannot avoid assimilating the context of site conditions, utilitarian requirements of space and the hybrid culture of the increasingly urbane people for whom it is built. Buildings could be defined as an assemblage of materials built with prevailing technological skills, put together to shelter as many varied human needs and activities, as there are cultures and climes and with contexts that are both diverse and plural. Essentially, Pre-Industrial values founded on Vitruvian principles that architecture = firmness + utility + beauty, were to be replaced by Industrial society's rationale architecture = lightness + utility, where beauty became a preoccupation with technology, and the present Post-Industrial situation being one where architecture = lightness + utility + simulated style of your choice.

2010

This paper aims to address design education issues, with a focus on the way the contemporary metropolis is conceived. We understand the reality of the contemporary metropolis as an amalgam of specific issues that transcend local and regional contexts, converging into the categories of the so-called ‘global cities’. These new urban realities derive from territories originally controlled by other logics, and are now in new stages of post-industrial development. Thus, we notice the presence of large peripheral areas where existing industrial activities initially took place, which were later transformed and migrated, leaving behind urban fragments that are taken over by informal activities. Such sites are often crossed, when not ‘on-winged’, by transport infrastructure, increasingly essential to the growing intensity of metropolitan flows. Working with this new reality clearly means first and foremost to reexamine the tools and traditional methods of design and representation of the arc...

In Halter, R. and Walthard, C. (Eds) “Cultural Spaces and Design, Prospects of Design Education” Librum LLC, Basel. PP. 92-102, 2019

In this chapter, we discuss the topics of cross-culturality, multi- and interdisciplinarity, and globalisation in design education. We start with personal reflections about our journeys as designers and educators travelling around the world, studying and working in different countries, and how being exposed to different cultures changed our perception of the world, our professional disciplines, and our ideas about education. Subsequently, we discuss our teaching experiences together, especially through a series of study tours conducted initially with graphic and industrial design students, and which scaled up to include more than 80 students from five different institutions. Finally, we offer some conclusions around cross-cultural design education. Citation: Montana-Hoyos, C. & Scharoun L. 2019. Cross-Culturality, Interdisciplinarity and Globalisation in Design Education. In Halter, R. & Walthard, C. (Eds) “Cultural Spaces and Design, Prospects of Design Education” Librum LLC, Basel. PP. 92-102