Karen Blincoe (Denmark), Mitsuo Katsui (Japan), Thomas Ockerse (USA), Kirti Trivedi (India)
Moderator: Ahn Sang-Soo (Korea)

Changing design education

This panel discussion was moderated by the Korean designer and educator, Ahn Sang-Soo, and included brief talks by Mitsuo Katsui (Japan), Kirti Tivedi (India), Thomas Ockerse (USA), and Karen Blincoe (Denmark). This was a discussion about methods of changing design education to encourage a more sustainable way of interacting with space, time, and form.
Katsui began the forum by making the point that sustainable design education is dependent on the understanding of one's relationship to surrounding space and time. He demonstrates this with a series of slides of his students' work. He shows interactive images detailing a persons proximity to his family, his air conditioner, Tokyo and the world overall, and pieces showing train schedules in Japan. His abstracted point seems to be related to showing intersections between language and objects as well.
Kirti Tivedi makes a point about how interaction with objects in art and in science has always been separated from the earliest education. These tendencies undermine a designer's ability to understand why nature can effortlessly create forms that designers struggle for lifetimes to mimic. Design education has been too much about doing what is "right" right now, and lacks perspective. Form is the visual result of forces acting on substance, Tivedi asserts, and without an understanding of those forces we cannot expect to successfully make form.
Thomas Ockerse spoke next, stating that spiritual development should be primary in the development of design students. Without proper attention to "soul", the student will not be able to approach design from an appropriate vantage point. The meaning of Education is "to draw out" not to fill a void. Design education's focus on technique has been a failure, he says. Ockerse hopes education, especially design education will become a more holistic business.
Karen Blincoe says that the challenge is changing the way we teach to meet the twentieth century. To move into the future, we must use today's culture as a point of departure. In making changes, we should create the world we want, and maintain contact with our pasts. She tells about the well-known tradition of Danish design but insists that this can be only a starting point for young designers, they must break away from tradition if to move forward.
Ahn Sang-Soo concludes the presentation with a series of slides showing his trip to China with his students. (NR)


Writer:Kosuke Ikehata/Norimitsu Korekata/Junko Sakamoto/Nobuko Shimuta/Naoko Hasegawa/Osamu Hisanaga/Sakurako Muto/Naho Yoshioka/Helmut Langer/Maggie Hohle/Nicole Rechia/Trysh Wahlig/Gitte Waldman/Robert Zolna
Photographer:Yoshimitsu Asai/Yasuhiko Katsuta/Fumihiko Mizutani