Learning through materials: transforming design education in the 21st Century

In contemporary design practice, materials are no longer understood merely as passive substances for shaping form or realizing function. Increasingly, they are approached as active agents that carry information, mediate relationships, and reveal complex entanglements between humans, technologies, ecologies, and societies. This shift has profoundly influenced the field of design education. As emerging environmental, technological, and social challenges continue to reshape the role of design, material engagement has also evolved from a primarily technical and production-oriented concern into a critical medium for reflection, experimentation, and knowledge production.

As a material researcher and educator, I regard materials as a powerful pedagogical medium through which designers can develop sensitivity toward the world they inhabit and transform. Through direct encounters with materials, students not only acquire technical competencies but also cultivate forms of embodied understanding, critical thinking, and speculative imagination. Materials invite dialogue: they resist, respond, transform, and reveal possibilities that cannot be fully anticipated through abstract planning alone. In this sense, learning through materials is not simply a method of making, but a way of perceiving, questioning, and engaging with contemporary realities.

At the same time, design education is undergoing significant transformation. Digital technologies, computational design tools, and increasingly dematerialized workflows have altered the ways designers interact with physical matter. While these developments open new possibilities, they also risk distancing designers from first-hand material experiences and tacit forms of knowledge embedded in processes of touching, testing, manipulating, and reflecting through making. In response, many contemporary design practices are reconsidering the importance of material dialogue and experiential learning within the educational process.

This article examines the evolving role of materials in design education and traces key shifts in material-oriented pedagogies from the twentieth century to the present. It reflects on how contemporary approaches to materials can support new forms of design competency, sustainability awareness, and regenerative thinking. By exploring the relationship between learning, making, and material engagement, the article argues that direct interaction with materials remains essential in cultivating meaningful and responsible design practices in the twenty-first century.

This figure summarized the critical changes in materials education for designers from past to now. 

Citation: Zhou, Z., Rognoli, V. & Pedgley, O. Learning through materials: transforming design Education in the 21st Century. Int J Technol Des Educ 36, 205–221 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10798-025-09992-z