VIRTUAL: Learning. Life. Work.
Abstract
Design is a collaborative process. This particularly evident in the era of climate change, where design project requires the input of various disciplinary knowledge, including landscape architecture, architecture, climate engineering, planning and project management, and rarely in neat sequential order. While it might be assumed that our current climate crisis draws these disciplines into a common alignment, recent research has highlighted the diversity in how disciplines conceptualise and respond to issues of climate. Despite this, the general concept of interdisciplinarity has become the catch cry for approaching complex contemporary issues like climate change. The core idea of bringing together multiple disciplinary knowledge has spread widely in university-level teaching and learning, particularly in design schools where concepts of collaboration, knowledge integration and co-creation are often used to describe faculty structures, aims and pedagogy. Even with growing critical research on interdisciplinary theory in the social sciences and education, there is still considerable confusion in exactly how disciplines merge specialisations in response to complex issues. This paper examines this issue by firstly tracing the emergence and differentiation of interdisciplinary models and how these have influenced design education. Particularly the pedagogical impact of the mid-twentieth century North American and European schools which have had a predominant influence on design education globally. The study then turns to three examples of design teaching approaches that address these tensions: immersion, melting-pots and mentors. By examining these cases in detail further reveals the ongoing challenges of hybridising disciplinary knowledge in contemporary design schools and offers lessons for future practices in design teaching and learning.
Wendy Walls is a landscape architect researcher, writer and educator. She holds a PhD in landscape architecture and is a lecturer at the University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on landscape design methods and practice under threat of climate change. This includes the role of landscape architecture in designing for the lived experience of heating cities. She has explored this through developing data-driven and digital design methodologies informed by eco-critical theory and material explorations.