Designing Solutions

According to many educators, the design and architecture disciplines have always to a certain extent had an international focus, but the way they are taught has shifted in the last few decades. 

“In my own design education, I was taught about famous buildings around the world. However, these buildings are often discussed as objects, divorced from their context and surroundings. I believe that we need to teach our design students to understand the context and places where these buildings and project sprang from,” says Jon Racek, professor in architecture at Indiana University (IU) and executive director of Play360, a nonprofit that helps build low-cost playgrounds in developing countries. 

Alison Mears, faculty member at The New School’s Parsons School of Design and director of Parsons Healthy Materials Lab, agrees that design students need to understand how architecture is connected to its surrounding environment and culture. “Practicing art and design requires an understanding of the world as a place interconnected by technological, environmental, economic, and cultural networks,” she says. 

Harriet Harriss, senior tutor in interior design and architecture at the Royal College of Art in London, says that in the last decade design education has shifted away from preparing students to work for companies after graduation to teaching them to work in a range of different countries, cultures, and even socioeconomic contexts. It is also increasingly interdisciplinary: “The rise of hyperconnectivity has helped facilitate more open source, inter- and transdisciplinary conversations and collaborations between students and emergent designers, facilitating a greater sense