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Executive Vice President and CEO of IIDA, Cheryl S. Durst, Hon. FIIDA caught up with Martha Thorne, Dean of the IE School of Design and Architecture as a continuation of the Big Picture series. Listen and watch this inspirational dialogue on the current state of design education, and its vision for the future.
Exploring the ways in which design and the education models are shifting to be more wholistic, Martha shared that the programs at IE often combine studies in business, the environment, social justice and more, with the specific intention of broadening the lens of the courses of study. Design thinking applies to so many other practices, and there are other fields that can greatly inform design.
"I’m excited that we may learn something from Covid. We just want to go back and have everything the way it was. Well, you can never go back, you always must go forward. But going forward learning the lessons about the importance of the individual, the importance of our systems, the importance of the neighborhood, and seeing the connections between things such as health and space and appreciating professionals in different fields." - Martha Thorne
Durst and Thorne discussed the role of design in being a catalyst for change in terms of equity and social justice, and the ways, the places that we inhabit contribute to, or diminish our overall health and well-being, and physiological states. The work being done by designers and educators today, is really imagining a new and exciting future.
"What’s been interesting is this shift in thinking about an interior space as monolithic, because I’m seeing more designers focus on that interior space as being part of a building, and that building being part of a neighborhood, and that neighborhood being part of a city. And thinking about interior space in the context of a larger whole." - Cheryl Durst
