Sustaining Design Education: A Philosophical Enquiry

Design education is an evolving domain of learning, with its presence in various realms including professional courses, school education, and for serving the larger population. Design education as a knowledge discipline finds itself intersecting with other domains of knowledge which are visual/sensory, scientific, business & management-oriented, and social/philosophical. The intent of design education is to teach a holistic process and broaden the designer’s scope of interdisciplinary resilience, making them adaptive for responding to any situation/context. The challenge is to understand the sustenance of this intent across time and place. The paper aims to revisit the ongoing design education cultures, and to reflect its relationship with the fast-changing design paradigms. It looks at design beyond ‘industrial thinking’ as a diversified field that has evolved from being craft-based and exclusive, to mass manufacturing and efficiency, and presently moving into a mode of sustainability and strategy. This paper discusses various pedagogical approaches to design education and raises new foundational questions for its current and futuristic relevance. It attempts to further reflect on understanding the complex interrelationships between social, technological, economic, and ecological fronts, manifesting a life-centric approach to design education beyond a human-centric one. It proposes a philosophical direction toward possible ways of steering design education. It underscores a need for design education to remain attuned to changing times, contexts, and the dynamic demands of our global society. The framework intends to ground design education in a philosophical foundation that emphasizes relevance and adaptivity for training holistic and responsive designers, transcending temporal, and geographical boundaries.