Collaborative Design

As Design moves into the mainstream of contemporary thought, collaboration among designers and many other disciplines, but especially Engineering, will be crucial for the future. It is in Italy that the necessity of collaboration has been understood most profoundly. Most Italian cities have large groups of designers working with architects and engineers on a variety of projects. The DNA of design is built into everything from strategic thinking to urban planning. Amidst the chaos of life in Italy, and the chaos of the Euro crisis, collaborative design may be one of the more obvious answers to thinking about objects, space and organization in new and different ways. There are many lessons to be learned from the broad and integrative approach used by Italian designers. In Canada, we have very little evidence of a design culture, even though there are some terrific and important designers from schools like Emily Carr and NSCAD. The reason for this can be found in government policy, but also in a general tendency to value technology as an artifact, without referencing the underlying design and engineering that went into the creation of the artifact. Collaborative design which is by its very nature, interdisciplinary may begin to address the challenge of bringing design into the foreground of our society. This is way overdue.