Inter- and transdisciplinary education

The many challenges faced by designers go beyond the specific field of Architecture and the Built Environment. The work expected of designers is becoming ever more complex and increasingly calls for integrated knowledge and skills. Construction is increasingly using technologies and production methods from other sectors and design solutions are having an ever-greater impact on other areas and actors. Partly for this reason, collaboration between specialist fields and co-creation with the business community, government bodies and civil-society organisations are increasingly becoming the norm. As a result, learning to think and work in a way that is enterprising, (socially) responsible and inter/transdisciplinary is becoming a crucial skill for specialists in the field.

It is important for students to build on their disciplinary foundations by becoming acquainted with inter/transdisciplinary (learning) environments where collaboration and an entrepreneurial attitude take centre stage. Living Labs bring together students of different academic backgrounds around practical case studies and involve actors from society, in order to reach integrated solutions together. Major challenges here include integrating the living lab within the curriculum and wider organisation, the didactic approach and assessing students with a wide range of prior knowledge or previous education.