How to Design a Design University?
Can you DIDIfy this?
An Open Letter to the DIDI Community
To our STUDENTS
Since we launched less than two years ago, our approach has been to rethink and transform — or DIDIfy — design education. From the beginning you have consistently shown the world your pioneering energy through the work and effort you have produced at DIDI — proving at once that design can evolve and design can change the world. Today we ask you to use that enterprising spirit to together shape the future of design education. As humanity is facing tremendous challenges brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, we need bold action to ensure uninterrupted access to high-quality teaching.
Let us harness the possibility to take our online presence to a new level of engaged learning. We need to constructively address the disruption of our regularly scheduled program, especially with remote hands-on learning in the studios and workshops. We aspire to set a precedent that other design schools from all over the world can learn from. We are confident that, as a creative and resilient community, we will be able to find affirmative solutions together.
This is the moment to demonstrate our ability to innovate in between and across boundaries, through time and space — to be agile and flexible in the midst of sudden change.
At DIDI, we aim to continue our trans-disciplinary learning approach and further develop it to meet the challenges of these turbulent times: from setting up production chains to ensure design ideas are seamlessly converted into design outcomes, to working closely with public officials to ensure a safe and healthy learning environment, and publicly sharing best practices and failures with other design educators globally.
We urge each one of you to transform this shock into a collective, intelligent and creative enterprise. As the pioneers of this new university, you have already distinguished yourselves among your peers as leaders. As engaged learners, there are so many small steps you can take to show your initiative in these circumstances.
While some of us may struggle with the newness and drawbacks of distant learning, such as connectivity, sound, space, tactility, or level of engagement, we are all here to help optimize the online studio experience. For example our new Fab Lab manager is currently prototyping remote 3-D printing and laser cutting capabilities, using open source and Raspberry Pi, and we are working with local couriers to find ways to expedite delivery of your work to your doorstep or professors for review . Here is a list that we have started on things we can all do. It awaits your ideas and suggestions.
Let us focus on the positive aspects of our social distancing. The promise of design is to move humanity away from defining more problems, and toward lessening the impact of things through creative problem solving.
As the world is developing new modes of living, less commuting and consumption are quickly having a positive environmental impact. Distant learning just might help us improve on our own lifestyles and behaviors: a small change by many that could make a positive impact globally.
A hundred years ago the Bauhaus set out to redefine the role of design in an unstable world. How the Bauhaus acted in stressful times has become the foundation of contemporary design teaching and practice. It is in moments such as these that we can truly apply all we have been learning as designers in order to transform this disruption into a new collective and defining achievement.
Are you ready to DIDIfy a better tomorrow?
DIDI Faculty
Hani Asfour, Mirko Daneluzzo, Catherine Dunford, Gionata Gatto, Noorin Khamisani, Miikka J Lehtonen, Carlos Montaña, Renata L Morais, Sayjel V Patel, and Raffi Tchakerian.
