Design, one piece of the puzzle: A conceptual and practical perspective on transdisciplinary design

Design, one piece of the puzzle: A conceptual and practical perspective on transdisciplinary design

van der Bijl-Brouwer, M. (TU Delft Methodologie en Organisatie van Design)

Lockton, Dan (editor)
Lenzi, S. (editor)
Hekkert, P (editor)
Oak, P (editor)
Sádaba, J (editor)
Lloyd, P (editor)

2022

Transdisciplinary research is claimed to be essential in tackling today’s complex societal challenges. Transdisciplinarity includes collaboration and integration across academic disciplines, non-academic ways of knowing, and the ‘real world’ of citizens, professionals and other stakeholders. Design can contribute to transdisciplinarity by framing complex challenges, integrating knowledge towards synthesizing solutions, and providing participatory practices to engage with the real world. However, for design to be successful in transdisciplinary research contexts, a better understanding of transdisciplinarity and design is required. In this paper I present a conceptual and practical perspective on transdisciplinary de-sign. I show how design relates to three different conceptions of transdisciplinarity: a multi-level disciplinary practice, a participatory practice, and a practice focused on complexity and social learning. Furthermore, I propose a set of trans-disciplinary competences that enhance designers’ ability to contribute to tack-ling complex societal challenges, including epistemic intelligence, worldview awareness, power literacy and reflexive and dialogic skills

transdisciplinary design
complexity
design education
transdisciplinary competences

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:5552661a-ea17-4144-a2bf-1e397b3a7115

https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.402

Design Research Society, Bilbao

Proceedings DRS2022

DRS 2022, 2022-06-25 → 2022-07-03, Bilbao, Spain

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Institutional Repository

conference paper

© 2022 M. van der Bijl-Brouwer