Michelle Kasprzak & John Marshall

A Pedagogy of Undesign: Addressing Design’s Foundational Reliance on Creation

In an age of polycrisis, what can graduate design education do? How do we educate graduate students to use design research in the service of complex transitions? This paper refers to principles from transition design as well as discourse from related fields such as governance studies for direction on rethinking pedagogical approaches to design. We map the growing pains design educators face as they attempt change in a slow-moving institutional context. We also outline possibilities for educators to address the obstacles they face when educating against the grain of normative design practice and its dependence on the creation of more objects for consumption. This paper is also a call to arms: if the rhetoric we use as advertising copy for our programmes is to truly match our curricula, design education must evolve to include a pedagogy of “Undesign”—a critical practice focused on mindful undoing, restoration, and repair.