The Future of Design Education

During Beirut Design Week 2012, we organized an international conference with design educators from Lebanon, Europe and the USA to initiate a discourse on the Future of Design Education. With an ever-changing landscape and understanding of design as a discipline, what are the challenges that educators face today? What is the cultural significance of the designs produced? How come sociologists are now heads of design schools? What is the difference between multdisciplinary and transdisciplinary design? How drastically will design education change in the future? These are some of the topics that were discussed during the full day conference, with each educator providing the audience with a distinct opinion based on the teaching methods of his or her design school. The conference also opened up room for some interesting debates between Lebanese design students and their educators. The list of speakers include: Linda Selwood Choueiry (NDU), Uta Brandes (Koeln International School of Design), Halim Choueiry (AUST), Michael Erlhoff (Koeln International School of Design), Gordon Hush (Glasgow School of Art), Jamer Hunt (Parsons New School), Randa Abdel Baki (LAU), Ayssar Arida, Marc Baroud (ALBA) and Tim Marshall (Parsons New School).