About the project

This research project seeks to examine the role tertiary design education can play in enabling graduate designers to produce more imaginative, sustainable and innovative design interventions that integrate satisfiers for a wider set of needs, environmentally, socially and for the economy.

In a world that paradoxically reveals itself as both fluid and progressive while also remaining obdurate in its sticking to the rut of the tried and tested, there is a need for design education that enables design graduates to operate in ways that are creative, responsive, generative and mindful of the multiple and ongoing impacts of the work they produce. This work locates itself in the larger discourse of societal transitions towards sustainable futures.

The project aims to investigate, through current, past and future design projects what the conditions are for teaching and learning in a tertiary design educational setting that are more ecological in nature and scope. The project aims to explore the intersection of design and transition studies, how designerly change manifests and can be catalyzed in a complex system such as a tertiary design curriculum and its pedagogy.