Conference Agenda

This conversation places the focus on the question of how the interest and adoption of transdisciplinarity within Design research and education has gained ground and been shaped in different degrees of breadth, depth and pace. This becomes particularly important in efforts to consolidate and articulate design’s impact in transdisciplinary areas that tackle complex problems in social and ecological research. In this sense, the session would appeal to design practitioners, researchers, educators, and students interested in and currently engaging with transdisciplinarity as an approach, knowledge production paradigm, and transformative and creative practice.

Building off from the work advanced in previous DRS conferences, specifically the 2022 Track on “Design Methods and Transdisciplinary Practices” (Ozkaramanli et al., 2022), as well as the 2024 conversation “Transdisciplinarity: Taking stock beyond buzzwords and outlining an agenda for design research” (Zaga et al., 2024), we propose a new dialogue arena that keeps this debate evolving in a context of increasing popularity but also expansion and depth. This session proposes to contextualize and expand beyond what has been learnt regarding the roles, metaphors and modes that Design takes in transdisciplinarity. The conversation will focus on observing and understanding the diverse topographies (outlines of features, boundaries and qualities of a territory) in current transdisciplinary design practice and the implications on design education.