Interdisciplinary Design Studio Research Articles

Another Gulf Is Possible

This interdisciplinary design studio engages the tensions between climate mitigation and climate adaptation efforts along the United States Gulf Coast, a region widely recognized as the domestic backbone of the oil and gas industry. Rooted in entangled narratives and tensions between economic prosperity, ecological stewardship, the systemic disenfranchisement of Indigenous and racialized communities, and industrial-scale energy production, this studio asked students to explore nuanced, nonconventional scenarios for adapting to ecosystem change, with projective considerations for new power relationships and collective ways of living on vanishing land. The pedagogical approach emphasized multiscalar systems analysis and collective world-building grounded in environmental justice organizing, to encourage students to think beyond technocratic design solutions for a changing climate.

Attending to Unbuilding

This interdisciplinary design studio organized itself around the razing of an historic oak allée at Washington University in St. Louis, and used the imminent removal of forty-three 100-year-old oaks as a catalyst for project-based investigations into the greater cultural meaning of trees—and their loss. The One Tree Project took the territory of the tree as its classroom, with the oaks serving as site, subject, and platform for public research. Pedagogically, this project identifies attention and unbuilding as fundamental design competencies, and worked with a single tree—in our durational research and ritual felling—as a tool to participate in this transformation.

Combining 2D and 3D Fundamentals to Foster Systems Thinking in Design Students: Reflections and Case Studies from an Interdisciplinary Design Degree

This paper proposes some interdisciplinary design education approaches which can help to introduce students to more holistic perspectives of design practice, the world, and the influence of design within it. Through reflection on our design education practice, the authors highlight particular benefits of integrative design pedagogy to increase student awareness of relationships between disciplines, systems thinking, ability to design for ‘synergy’, and to more adequately prepare designers for an increasingly interconnected and changing world. Case study as a qualitative methodology is utilised to reflect on our interdisciplinary design studio educational practice (Baskarada, 2014; Rashid et al., 2019). Reflective practice methodology is also used to critically reflect on the design education case studies (Brookfield, 2000; Osterman, 1990). Key findings from these case studies suggest that teaching both 2D and 3D design fundamentals in combination, and having real world projects, can give students more awareness of the interrelatedness of design disciplines and foster systems thinking from early in their design studies/careers. Non-assessed collaboration between students from different programmes also needs to be encouraged and facilitated. Introducing critical reflective approaches are also important, to give learners deeper understandings of the implications of design and the importance of designing to counteract ‘wicked problems’.

Coping on the inside: Design for therapeutic incarceration interventions - A case study.

Adjusting to incarceration is traumatic. An under-utilized strategy understood to buffer and counteract the negative impacts of incarceration are nature interventions. Outcomes of an interdisciplinary design studio course focused on developing masterplans for a women's prison in the Pacific Northwest (US) are presented. Course objectives included comprehension and application of therapeutic and culturally expressive design principles to increase the benefits of environmental design within a carceral setting; collaboration, developing a deeper, more representative understanding of how design processes can improve the lives of marginalized populations; and enhancing design skills, including at masterplan and schematic scale using an iterative process and reflection. A landscape architect, occupational therapist, and architect teaching team, with support from architects and justice specialists facilitated an elective design studio course to redesign the Washington Corrections Center for Women campus. In a ten-week academic quarter, six student design teams created conceptual masterplans for therapeutic outdoor spaces at the Washington Corrections Center for Women. Students presented their plans to prison staff, current and ex-offenders, and architects and landscape architects in practice, and then received positive feedback. Despite well-documented need for and value of nature interventions to improve health and wellbeing for everyone regardless of circumstance or situation, the project awaits administrative approval to move forward to installation.

Bridging Academic Disciplines with Interdisciplinary Project-based Learning

This article describes the implementation of an interdisciplinary design studio as a means to teach creative problem-solving through project-based learning. "Learning and Innovation Skills" has been designated as a core skill that students need to be successful in today's world, and project-based learning is one approach to helping students develop these skills. After describing the early genesis and development of the interdisciplinary design studio, the article describes results of initial research into the students’ experiences in studio courses. Students described courses as flexible and reported high levels of motivation stemming from the authenticity of the problems. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of the studio, some students described deepening disciplinary skills while at the same time being exposed to cross-disciplinary skills. They believed the courses helped develop interdisciplinary collaboration, creativity, and communication skills.

Learning about others

Recently we witness a rising interest in interdisciplinary collaboration in both industrial design and engineering education. Since developing technology and innovation invites more complex design problems that are usually beyond the professional skills and competences of a single person, learning how to work in interdisciplinary teams becomes a central concern within the undergraduate programs of these fields. With the aim of contributing to interdisciplinary design education, this paper explores a four-week extra-curricular education activity called Interdisciplinary Design Studio (IDS) that was carried out at Middle East Technical University. The empirical data comes from the accounts of the students who participated in the IDS, from the Departments of Industrial Design, Architecture, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Computer Engineering, Industrial Engineering and Business Administration, who came together in six interdisciplinary teams to develop innovative products following the stages of a design process. Drawing on their accounts the paper seeks to answer two questions: First, how and in what ways students learned about other disciplines; and second, to what extent and how these learning experiences shape their approaches towards developing ways to collaborate with people (both tutors and students) from other disciplines.

The role of space in interdisciplinary collaboration in design education

The growing interest in the collaborative design education for innovation has mainly been concerned with students and learning outcomes. We know less about the collaboration between the tutors who teach interdisciplinary design courses. Addressing this gap, this article explores the effect of space on the interdisciplinary collaboration between faculty members from the fields of industrial design, architecture, engineering and business administration, who come together to design and conduct an extra-curricular educational activity, Interdisciplinary Design Studio (IDS) at METU. The empirical basis of this study comes from the interviews with the faculty members and the participant observation notes generated during the IDS meetings. The findings show that the effect of space on collaboration becomes evident over three issues, (1) the participation of tutors, (2) the commonality of their expectations from a design project, and (3) the interaction not only between students and tutors, but also among tutors as an interdisciplinary team.

Urbanheart Surgery – a Collaborative Interdisciplinary Design Studio

<p class="Body1">The following paper presents an interdisciplinary design studio program at the School of Architecture and Built Environment, Deakin University, referred to as the ‘UrbanHeart Surgery’. This is a design based research forum that attempts to facilitate a landscape of decision-making that stimulates an integrated approach to design within the urban context.</p><p>The Urbanheart program has developed into a very successful teaching, research and public/community relations program. It has not only secured an ongoing relationship with various planning authorities, but its core of industrial partnerships has expanded to include four regional councils (Bendigo, Ballarat, Geelong, Surfcoast and Warrnambool), three metropolitan municipalities (Melbourne City, Port Phillip, Wyndham and Maribyrnong) and close links with various Victorian State government departments.</p><p>The program actively integrates postgraduate students from Architecture, Urban Design, Landscape Architecture and Planning. The different scales of resolution at which the unit operates would welcome further integration with students from Mechanical Engineering, Art and Design, Information Technology and Environmental Science.</p>

Learning Together: A Collaborative Autoethnographic Exploration of STEAM (STEM + the Arts) Education

AbstractBackgroundThere is a growing interest in STEAM (STEM + the Arts) education as a means to enhance the creativity of STEM students and broaden interest in STEM fields. Many art educators, however, object to the instrumental justification for study in the arts as a way to improve student performance in other areas.PurposeDrawing on the first two authors' engagement in an interdisciplinary design studio, this study develops an expanded view of how STEAM might enrich engineering education in ways that more closely align with the pedagogical commitments of the arts.Design/MethodThis article is written as a collaborative autoethnography between the first two authors, educators in environmental engineering and art education, respectively. The study is grounded in the educational philosophy of arts advocate Maxine Greene, who views learning as an active, collaborative search for meaning, “wide‐awakeness,” and social change.ResultsOur dialogue reveals the potential for STEAM to provide students and educators with opportunities to explore personally relevant connections between materials, design, society, and the natural environment and to critically engage with implicit and explicit facets of disciplinary identity.ConclusionsThis view of STEAM simultaneously complements and challenges current conceptions of this emerging educational movement that, almost without exception, are underpinned by calls for competitive economic growth and technological development. We hope future research will build on our perspectives to continue a conversation about STEAM that considers the diverse contributions of, and mutual benefits to, all parties involved.

Gesamtkunstwerk in Design: Interdisciplinary Design and Pedagogy

This paper examines the interdisciplinary practice within design realms including urban planning, architecture, landscape architecture and interior design. It discusses the pedagogical approaches at design schools to foster designers capable of design challenge with interdisciplinary skills. As the complexity of contemporary multicultural society increasingly requires a higher level of expertise in professional service, no individual designer can be expert in all fragmented expertise across the whole design and associated engineering areas. A designer, therefore, should rely on the expertise of other practitioners in areas where he or she doesn't possess proficiency and educational background. From this sense the need of interdisciplinary approaches across diverse range of design and engineering through the collaboration is rising. Historically most of discussion made on interdisciplinary approaches is limited to collaboration between architecture and supporting engineering. This paper focuses on the collaboration with design realms. Three case studies done in an interdisciplinary firm are explored, focusing on design process that is non-linear and complementary. Finally the integrative pedagogical approaches to provide students with more exposure to allied disciplines are navigated with exemplary student work from interdisciplinary design studio.

Enough about Me: Perceptions of Interior Architecture Students in an Interdisciplinary Design Studio Setting

Enough about Me: Perceptions of Interior Architecture Students in an Interdisciplinary Design Studio Setting

Blurred Architecture: Duration and performance in the work of Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Architects Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio have questioned conventional approaches to spatial temporality and the situation of architecture since the late 1970s. Now joined by Charles Renfro, the installation and architectural projects of their interdisciplinary design studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro are representative of the shift from the aesthetic architectures of post-modernism towards a critical architecture based upon the principles of time-based art. As a reflection on the question of duration and performance, this article returns to Diller Scofidio + Renfro's temporary structure for the Swiss Expo in 2002. Blur Building, or Blur, underlines the occurrence of time through its continuously shifting structure and ephemeral state. Located on a steel-viewing platform on Lake Neuchâtel, Blur was a literal performance of its lakeside site as a series of water jets formed a suspended mist cloud around its steel frame: an ephemeral architecture of water and action. This event-based spatial ecology of Blur is typical of Diller Scofidio + Renfro's focus on the affect of architecture and the social consequence of buildings. Influenced by their initial explorations within a theatrical setting, Diller Scofidio + Renfro integrate the experience of technology and architecture to evoke the social and material contexts of the ‘site’ or situation. Notions of spectatorship and participation recur throughout their architectural interventions, as they aim to position architecture as a means of spatial and haptic revelation: where the event of architectural experience has a direct impact upon our embodied perception of ourselves. Framed by Dorita Hannah's notion of ‘spatial performativity’ and the writings of architect's such as Juhani Pallasmaa and Bernard Tschumi, this article concludes with by reflecting on how Blur is representative of the critical discourses that have shaped contemporary approaches to site and performance, the dramaturgy of architecture.

An Interdisciplinary Design Studio: How Can Art and Engineering Collaborate to Increase Students’ Creativity?

(2010). An Interdisciplinary Design Studio: How Can Art and Engineering Collaborate to Increase Students’ Creativity? Art Education: Vol. 63, No. 2, pp. 49-53.