Traditional educational methodology would structure student assignments to be carried out in studio, by the student as a sole practitioner, with the oversight of a professor or critic. The new paradigm fully integrates the diverse ecology of principles of sustainable thinking and goes beyond this to employ a co-generative, experiential, and cross-disciplinary approach.
Co-generative Design work should be co-generated amongst stakeholders at all levels: students, faculty, administration, the school community, end-users, and the design community.
Experiential Where in the past design courses protect their traditional classroom boundaries, the next generation of design education welcomes the disturbances from external forces. Classroom walls must become permeable, and design challenges must engage real-world systems. The ’doing’ in design must encompass a broader field of interaction, and collaboration must be a fundamental attribute of any meaningful design challenge.
Cross-disciplinary Collaboration that occurs across disciplines must no longer be an exception to the rule as much as a core component of a new design pedagogy. Designers do not need to master the other discipline’s materials as a practitioner of that discipline would, but instead apply that discipline’s knowledge to their own design work. An interdisciplinary experience shifts the entire curricular structure toward deeper and more meaningful learning opportunities.
