How is design & architecture education preparing for the future?
Tom Morgan
Head of Strategy & Founder of NONSPACE? | Speaker on Design Futures | Britisk-Bergenser | Passion for Generative Business | Chairman of Design Region Bergen | Guest Lecturer | FRSA
Whether you're a designer, architect, educator, student or curious about how those who will shape the future think; this is for you ??
On the 7th June I had the pleasure of hosting a symposium at the Faculty of Fine Art, Music & Design at Universitetet i Bergen (UiB) . An afternoon of presentations & conversations on educating the future designers and architects. They’re skills, roles, agency and responsibilities in the context of an exponential change, permacrisis and AI.?
With so many valuable presenters contributing to the discussion, I’m taking the liberty of sharing my introduction to the proceedings ?? and my key takeaways from 7 brilliant speakers (to be found at the end).
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We are delving into a familiar discussion of designing design. 'The Future of the Designer & Interior Architect'; but, today our conversation is in a context unlike what it would have been just six months ago.
The roles and responsibilities, and the skills and training of designers resonates with all of us in the professions, from educators and students to practitioners; both new and long-in-the-tooth.
In fact it has been at the centre of design discourse since the Arts and Crafts movement of the 19th Century with William Morris & John Ruskin’s critique of the industrialisation of life. Through the 20th century with the dawn of the modernists from Le Corbusier, van der Rohe, Lloyd Wright, Gropius, to the post-war social-consciousness of Henry Drayfus and Victor Papanek.?To the more recent leaders who directed the professional & academic discourse that has led us to where we are today. The turtleneck-spectacled grand-evangelicals of design for business; doing a great deal of thinking, sprinting and preaching from California to Mumbai. To the academic design activists and subversive subculture of independent designers, collectives and studios.
So while the self critique of design is business as usual, the context for the future is looking a little out of control! We find ourselves confronting multiple crises and navigating shifting codes of ethics.
However, we are not here to wallow in doom and gloom.?The pursuit of design is rooted in optimism. The essence of what we do is striving to create a better future. So, I encourage your optimism and constructiveness.
I’m always mightily impressed by design students’ ambition, to set themselves briefs that seem to be beyond most governments. It is commendable, but we should critique if they have yet been given the skills and tools to take on such mammoth design challenges.?
I stress this point because many design students and juniors feel overwhelmed by the massive topics that dominate design discourse. Understandably so, with the proposition that ‘design is both the problem?and the answer’.
Studying for a career as a designer starts with an onboarding of design’s negative impact on our environment and the responsibilities of solving complex social issues. Some have to wrestle with the charge that they have chosen an ‘unethical’ path of creating desire in a world that is stuffed. And right now this is playing out with the rapid rise and access of machine learning… with rumours that their profession could become automated before they’re out of the starting block.
It seems to me that we are in a period of stress and low resilience. That there is an imbalance between the sense of urgency in our responsibilities, and our ability and agency in having the power to have an impact.
The last two decades have seen the rise of design management centred around gaining a seat at the table, alongside CEOs and influential positions; public, private, social and governmental. In a previous role as a design academic in a business school, I came across an wonderful paper, published in 2009, in the ‘Journal of Values-Based Leadership’.
It is the work of Bruce Lloyd , a now Emeritus professor of Strategic Management at Southbank University, London.?Titled ‘Power, Responsibility & Wisdom: Exploring the issues at the core of Ethical Decision-Making and Leadership’
In his paper he emphasised the need to balance power and responsibility. Think of power and responsibility as an X and a Y axis, intersecting in the middle, and both going from low to high.
In the bottom corner we have no power and no responsibility. In a context without either power and responsibility we become mere bystanders. One thing we are not!
But power alone, without any responsibility is the realm of megalomania. Something industrial designers and architects have been accused of for the past century. In our choice of materials and form without function, so on.
On the other hand, when burdened with great responsibility but no power to act, stress and frustration arise. This is something that perhaps we seem to feel when talking about massive problems and macro-uncertainty.
In conclusion, the point I take is… to design wisely we need to strike the balance between power and responsibility in every given context.
So this brings us to the core questions of this symposium:?
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Here are my key takeaways from the expert panel of leaders across design & architecture, philosophy & tech; academics & practitioners, both the private sector & government.
?? Understand the difference between ‘facts’ & values’ in the conversation on sustainability. ?
?? ?? Question, what is user knowledge and how do we really use it? Appreciate bias and the reality of phenomena.
?? Value the idea of transdisciplarity and the necessity of creating new disciplines from collaboration (a part of what the great John Wood and others call metadesign)
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Professor Henrik Berg
?? It’s a good idea to start at the end and work backwards to go forwards. Not just as a process to solve a problem but also in framing the problem. “We shouldn’t jump to conclusions when solving a problem!”?
? The importance of working with other expertise… the skills of working interdisciplinarily with the ambition of transdisciplinarily.?
?? When asking ‘is AI threat or a tool?’ We have to consider if we asking it of the human use of AI, or AI ‘itself’?
?? ?? “It’s not jobs that will be lost but the content of jobs”
?? Tips to stay relevant in the dawn of AI:
Professor Dag Elgesem
??? New skills of design language… prompting the tool (language defines our thinking)
?? Interfacing our tools… from tacit skills in handling the tool to instructional and emotional conversational skills with the tool.
???? The importance of collaboration. How we engage with each other is essential not just in multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary even transdisciplinary… but simply across the businesses and organisations who of the same discipline.
?? This means we have to ask ourselves ‘how are we open to each other?’
??? Social sustainability demands collaboration throughout the community, as part of designs methodology.
?? We have a natural yearning for community and it’s only through cooperation can we truly design our cities and towns for more sustainable, responsible and healthier lives.
Arild Eriksen from FRAGMENT
?? Design and architecture is often measured by its outcome but what we can see here is that the value of collaborative process… it’s a joint effort.
?? The role of the designer should be valued as a facilitator, guiding and navigating diverse expertise, knowledge & experiences.
NB:
The symposium was curated by Head of Research at the Department of Design & Vice Dean for Education Bente Irminger & welcomed by the Head of the Department of Design Mona Larsen (?? superstars)