Abstract
The era of globalisation is characterised by demands for ecological and cultural sustainability. Those demands request reintroduction of indigenous voices and values, recognition of the local and awareness about the particular. The post-colonial sensitivity asks for partnerships, rather than patronage. In that context internationalised design education needs to consider some new questions: Are Western ways of thinking (including analysis and design methods) directly applicable to the East? To what extent do educational, design and design research methods belong to the cultural contexts that have shaped them? Does the otherness of Oriental cultures demand new approaches? How to educate designers capable not only to recognise, but also to celebrate the difference of the other? Can, and should, design education of and for the other be deliberately and manifestly different from the usual practice? This paper argues that design education, research and practice should recognise the origins and the limits of their own theories, acknowledging that they carry both idio-lects and socio-lects. It also argues that the other can, and sometimes should remain the other – even that Derrida's tout autre. The paper is illustrated with examples from the author's own teaching and research experiences in cultures significantly different from his own.
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Notes
The graduates from my international studios MOST/BMB include an Australian who now works in Bosnia; a Malaysian Chinese who practises architecture in Singapore; a Japanese and a Sri Lankan who stayed in Melbourne; an Indian who went to work in Hong Kong; an Australian in Tokyo, the other one in Saudi Arabia; a Bahraini who returned home, a Chinese who went back to contribute to the urban explosion of Shanghai and building explosion of the pre-Olympic Beijing; an Indonesian and a Thai who now teach in their own countries … They all helped me to become attentive of the other and increasingly able to learn about, and from the difference.
I conducted MOST and BMB studios with my colleagues from the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning of the University of Melbourne:
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MOST 1998 (first international overseas design studio at the Faculty) with Ms Esther Charlesworth (fieldwork was organised in collaboration with the Institute for Protection of Cultural Heritage, Mostar);
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MOST 1999 and 2000 with Dr Qinghua Guo (fieldwork was organised in collaboration with the Tsinghua University, Beijing and Architectural University, Xi’an);
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BMB 2002 and 2003 with Professor Catherin Bull (fieldwork was organised in collaboration with the Kasetsart University, Bangkok and School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Bordeaux).
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Radović, D. Towards culturally responsive and responsible teaching of urban design. Urban Des Int 9, 175–186 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.udi.9000124
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.udi.9000124