Pedagogy 2025

Abstract

In response to growing calls for academia to transcend its ivory tower positioning, this presentation explores a critical pedagogical approach in Interior Design education that leverages urban space as studio and interior thinking as civic practice. Drawing from the South African context, where post-apartheid spatial injustices persist, this paper reflects on a restructured Honours programme in Interior Design at the University of Johannesburg, where students engage with real-world urban issues through immersive, community-rooted, and design-research-led learning. Challenging conventional pedagogies centred around commercial briefs and isolated design studios, the project instead implements a “situated learning” model in which students investigate and intervene in live urban contexts, such as adaptive reuse sites in Johannesburg’s Alexandra or contested heritage and historical site preservation. These studios are framed not just as design problems, but as pedagogical tools to address ethical, social, and environmental complexities. Technologies such as AI-driven site analysis, spatial mapping, and immersive storytelling are integrated into student work, not as ends in themselves, but as methods to deepen engagement with users, places, and histories. The paper argues for an “interior urbanism” pedagogy, where the boundaries between inside and outside, theory and action, classroom and city, are deliberately blurred. By embedding teaching within the tensions of the urban real, this approach fosters criticality, empathy, and relevance. It reflects a future-facing pedagogy that is globally resonant, yet locally grounded, where interior design becomes a form of public practice, and education becomes a site of urban transformation.