Creating Program Culture Through Competition: How Multi-Disciplinary Design Teams Will Help to Birth a New Program

Abstract

This paper will describe a new program in the Herron School of Art + Design on the Indiana University Indianapolis Campus as it ventures into developing an Interior Design Program with an emphasis on Energy Efficient and Evidence Based Design. With an internationally recognized rich history of People Centered Design practices, the department has proven to be a trailblazer, and now we will be building upon that with the integration of globally recognized design competitions as the basis for our program development & growth. Leaning on the experience of a faculty member new to the department, but not new to design competitions, this multi-disciplinary team & competition approach will serve as the introduction of AEI curriculum (architecture, engineering, & interior design) to the student body. In addition to the implementation of AEI, we will include expertise of People Centered Design, the cornerstone of the department, and introduce students to interior environments designed be to be both aesthetically pleasing and maximizes its energy efficiency and universal designed user-friendliness. Our new plan of study will give students a real-world experience of give and take amongst peers, project management, and design development. Incorporating the Building Information Modeling (BIM) approach, students will have developed the dynamic presentation imagery and needed construction documents to sell the concept. The assessment will allow us to utilize the data to help with the future course development, program growth, and long-term planning of the degree program. This will be a multi-year project, and this paper will focus on step one which is curriculum building, team development and the multi-disciplinary approach. The Multidisciplinary Design approach has proven to be both challenging and rewarding in both industry and academia. Bringing together bright minds to attack a design problem functionally and systematically can evaluate the boundaries of all team members. “For some professionally, vocationally, or technically oriented careers, curricula delivered in higher education establishments may focus on teaching material related to a single discipline. By contrast, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary teaching (MITT) results in improved affective and cognitive learning and critical thinking, offering learners/students the opportunity to obtain a broad general knowledge base” Pooley, Alison and Wanigarathna, Nadeeshani 1