ABSTRACT
Over the few past decades, expectations about design education have changed dramatically, as designers are increasingly expected to be more multidisciplinary, have more systematic and critical thinking skills, and integrate more relevant knowledge from other academic disciplines. However, the problem is that providing these skills is not always feasible, partly due to resistance from design educators themselves and bureaucratic obstacles imposed by educational systems. However, we believe that these factors should not prevent us from improving educational programs. This chapter discusses these issues and our motivation to develop what we call “synergies”. We implemented a pedagogical project to offer students an interdisciplinary experience throughout their design course that involves all knowledge areas within our school. While it is still early to make categorical conclusions regarding the efficacy of this project, we can present and discuss good indicators of success and difficulties encountered in implementing it. The work we present here suggests that bureaucratic limitations can be overcome. The synergies require substantial work from everyone involved, rigorous planning, and gradually overcoming resistance from teachers, but the project reveals interesting new approaches for design education and the fruitful implementation of project-based learning.
