Redesigning Design Education:
Unlearning Strategies
This project addresses the topic of academic production in Communication Design, particularly with regard to design education. Its guiding principle is the search for education policies based on plurality, inclusivity and representativeness.
The project compiles theoretical content and projects as a basis for teaching practices that seek to contradict the status quo through the integration of principles linked to design decolonization, feminism, intersectionality, and queer theories. It consists of a print publication and this website, which together include three different levels of content: 1) theory, as a basis for new practices in design education, 2) practices, with regard to pedagogies for teaching design, and 3) projects, including student projects developed within these pedagogical practices.
The publication is organized into three chapters, although their themes are interrelated and inform each other.
The first chapter “Decolonising Design Education” covers foundational problems in design education, such as the “Westernised University” and the “‘Doing Good’ Movement”, as well as strategies aimed at countering this tendency, namely by exploring the concept of Pluriversality as opposed to Universality.
The second chapter “Designs for the Pluriverse” addresses Arturo Escobar's discussion of the theoretical foundations for “Transition Design”, relating to Discourses of Transition originating in initiatives and groups outside of Design, and presents the “Transition Design Framework" proposed by the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University.
The third and final chapter is focused on intersectional approaches to Design Education and introduces concepts such as criticality, relative to the Design Canon and Educational Curricula. It addresses “the Discomfort of Feminist Design Pedagogy” and discusses “Norm Creative Pedagogy”. It also addresses teaching practices built on these concepts, such as at the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD); the chair of Design and Gender Studies at the Faculty of Architecture and Design (FADU); and, finally, the Norm-Creative Master Program in Visual Communication at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm.
The website brings together a series of talks and presentations addressing the pedagogical practices presented in the print publication.
