Sustainability in Design Education

A Comparative Design Studies MFIRP Project at IIT Delhi and TU Delft 

About

IITD and TUD, both primarily technology-centric institutions, have a significant discourse of Design (as Industrial Design and Design Engineering), often overshadowed by the majority of Science and Engineering departments. The unique unfolding of Design at these institutions has addressed various societal issues with a human-centred and technological flair. The collaborative research intends to explore the discourse around sustainability and social design at these institutions and regions.

The project intends to unearth unique cross-cultural and transnational perspectives on sustainability and social design. 

The project looks beyond the popular discourse of technology and innovation at IITD and TUD to the realm of design. We intend to look into the contributions to advancing knowledge in sustainable design education by comparing practices and approaches from diverse cultural and institutional contexts. TU Delft has pioneered sustainable design education through its popular models, such as Circular Product Design and Design for Sustainability. IITD, through its various programmes has approached sustainability as the impact on social lives in grounded and human-centric ways. such as ‘Ecodesign’ methodology (Diehl, Varadarajan & Mestre 2001). 

The project reinvigorates the IITD TUD collaboration from the 1990s and intends to foster collaboration on research and teaching between the two institutions through Design. It will build on complementary expertise to construct a cross-cultural understanding of the themes. The project intends to benefit all the departments, including technology, policy, management and social sciences.  It will provide insights for educators, policymakers, and practitioners to enhance sustainability in design education globally.

Saurabh Tewari, PhD

Department of Design, IIT Delhi
Design History and Communication Design 

Saurabh has a foundation and momentum with his contextual doctoral work in Indian Design, “Design Paradigms: A Postcolonial Design History of India”, exploring the Positions, Pedagogy and Projects of Design in Indian Higher Education institutions since Indian Independence. Through the years, he has focused on articulating Indian Design, developing case studies, theorising, and even contributing to global encyclopaedias on topics including Design History, Sustainability and Social Design. As an academic, he has guided several projects exploring the grounded and critical versions of design. Familiarity with the design education landscape as an academic with 14 years of experience as a design historian and communication designer enables him to do well in the proposed project.

Samuel W. Franklin, PhD

Department of Design, TU Delft
Design History and Critical Theory

Samuel is a cultural historian working at the intersection of intellectual history and the history of technology and business. His first book, The Cult of Creativity: A Surprisingly Recent History (University of Chicago Press 2023), which has earned favourable reviews in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Leonardo, among others, has been featured on national radio in the United States and Australia, and is being translated into Japanese and Chinese, reveals the historical roots of today's reigning design practices and paradigms. He has since undertaken a transnational history of creative thinking methods and preliminary research into the roots of sustainability discourse. With a background in exhibition design and three years of experience teaching Industrial Design Engineering at TU Delft, Samuel has tapped into the discourse of design in general and sustainability in particular.