🚀 The Future of Design School 🎨 | Istituto Europeo di Design | PI Apparel

Good morning everyone, and thank you to PI Apparel for inviting me and Natasha also for inviting me. Thank you so much. And I'm Benedetta Lenzi, I'm director of IED in Florence, which is the European Institute of Design. And IED is the largest higher education network. We have 13 schools around the world, in Italy, in Spain, in Spain and in Brazil. And we are a benefit company, meaning that we put a lot of focus on sustainability and ethics in our works and in our courses that we develop. So, this talk today invites us to reconsider the purpose and the structure of design education in response to what are the urgencies of our time. So, in the, in the face of climatic emergencies and technological acceleration, we need to start reconsider what have been now considered as outdated pedagogical models. And this is not just about reforming the curricula, as I was saying, it's not just about like changing the courses that we, we offer, but it's about radically reimagining the school itself as a space of transformation and as a space of care and as a space of collective transformation. So today we'll explore a little bit how learning can become a process of radicality, of being radical, of a collective process and a transformative process that can help designers and our students become not not just become designers that fit in the world, but that have the tools to reshape it. So I'm going to be starting with a question, which is the question that I asked myself as soon as I got into the European Institute of Design. And it is like, if we recognize that time and modes of learning are now everywhere, mostly in our devices and with all the information that we are surrounded by, then schools and education can no longer be just places of transmission of knowledge, of transferring knowledge, but they must become something else. They must become something deeper. So if learning is everywhere, school doesn't become less necessary. It just becomes necessary in a different way. And it could become, and it should become, a sort of compass that helps us navigate through life and through the world, or a testing ground for thoughts, not a place of transmission of knowledge, but a place of transformation. So in a world that is defined by complexity, by crisis, design is not and cannot be just about making objects. It cannot be confined in— to a studio. Aesthetic or industry, but it's about, and it must be about systems. It must be about relationships, imaginaries, and futures. And so if we want to rethink the world, we believe that we must begin by rethinking how to teach and how to learn design. And we must reimagine education not as a process of shaping individuals into ideal forms, but as a form of coexistence. So a form of shared living in proximity and an environment when— where learning happens through exchange, through mutual transformation, and through proximity. And so in this vision, the school becomes not a closed space, but a porous space, a relational space. And it's an ecology of differences in which knowledge is not possessed, but it's shared, and where knowledge is not transferred, but it's generated in common. And this relational logic demands that we, as a school, within the school, we dissolve hierarchies, we redistribute agency, and we embrace unpredictability as a source of creative potential. So traditional models within education, but everywhere, focus on individual talent and authorship. So we focus on— we've always been traditionally focused on like the model of the solitary genius, the individual that expands its talent within the school in an individual process. But design is relational. That's what we are saying. And so it emerges within the dialogue, in a context, and in collaboration. So we believe that we should move from individual portfolios to collective, and from competition to a co-creation process. So designing for future generations requires reorientation from personal expression to shared responsibility. And education should prepare students to not to stand out alone, but to contribute meaningfully, as meaningfully as possible to these interdependent systems of care and creation. And this means shifting from a meritocratic model that we are used to of like individual success to a culture of mutual recognition. Where learning as well as success is seen as a co-authored process. And this is a huge shift. And the school in this sense becomes a community of interdependence. It becomes a place where one's growth and one's success is deeply entangled with the flourishing of others. So education, should begin with a principle of radical openness. So an openness to others, an openness to the context that the school is set in, an openness to the unknown, to the difference, to transformation. And this radical openness is not just an attitude, but it is a structural condition for meaningful learning. It requires the schools to see sees being a place of reproduction and become a place of encounter, a place of invitation, a place of co-creation. So we might say that radical openness is not just a method in design education, but it's an ecology. It's a way of being together, of living together, of learning with and through others across boundaries and across disciplines. Disciplines. So knowledge, if knowledge is not a product to be delivered, it becomes a process to be shared. So we have many methods that we can include in our pedagogical process which can help shift this perspective, like peer learning or group projects. And these diverse perspective must become like core practices within schools. And in this vision, the teacher shifts and becomes the facilitator of this shared discovery. And the classroom should resemble less of a site of instruction and more like a temporary commons, like a living studio where knowledge gets negotiated and where also like bodies and voices, they co-inhabit in the same space and learning emerges from this coexistence process. So in this perspective, it's like as learning becomes a sort of like architecture of intimacy, an architecture of proximity, where the physical aspect, the emotional aspect, the intellectual presence of each person matters. And so it becomes a really deeply situated pedagogy that understand that the classroom, it's itself is a material space of encounter and negotiation. So we have to think that design is not a solo act. Design happens in a relation and intersects with politics. It intersects with care, with technology, with ecology. And so our school must mirror this complexity because it's the— complexity that we have to face on a daily basis. And so transdisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, it's not optional anymore. It's essential. And we need, in order to face this complexity, we need to build flexible curricula and make porous boundaries. So to educate designers today means this. Dissolving this disciplinary frame, dissolving the boundaries that we are used to traditionally consider from the 1900s and a modernist view. So we need to dissolve the barriers between different design disciplines and area, but also between design and life, also between the school and the territory. And the studio and the school must expand into the world and vice versa. The world has to— expand within the school. And so design becomes a language for mediating between these disciplines and for weaving together and intersecting different types of knowledges into a meaningful and usable commons. And so in this sense, the school becomes a laboratory for cross-pollination and a sort of crossroad, OK? So an unstable— a dynamic site where these boundaries between theory and practice, between thinking and making, between the school and the territory are constantly redefined. So if we need to redefine the discipline boundaries and the boundaries between the school and outside of the school, we also need to redefine and rethink the curriculum that we offer. So curricula must adapt to the urgencies of the world, and this means inviting in the school people from outside, which don't really have anything apparently to do with the school, but they can be scientists, they can be activists, they can be community voices, even meaning legitimizing informal and embodied knowledge. So the curriculum should function less as a predefined way that defines your path, your learning path, and more as an evolving ecosystem. So responsive to the context, driven by dialogue, and open to contamination. And so in this sense, the curriculum becomes a civic platform, a space where students not only acquire skills and learn, but they also build capacity for collective agency. And like an ecosystem, okay? It support, it must support diversity, it must support feedback loop, adaptive rhythms, and allow this multiplicity and experimentation instead of standardization. So what we also need to consider is that learning must be grounded in the real, okay? So design students must go beyond the studio, and there must be this solution of boundaries also, because the design students must go into communities, they must go into complexity, and they must listen before acting, or before designing, and design with and not for. And this is crucial. We need to have this embedded dimension where education takes on a political quality. A spatial quality. And we have to consider the site of learning, we have to consider the school itself and the context as not neutral context, okay? It is whatever context that we are in is charged, is contextual, is negotiated. So the city, the neighborhood, the territory in which a school is, and they're not just case studies, side is to consider while we are learning, but they are co-authors of the learning process. And so learning itself becomes a situated practice where the local knowledge, the social tensions, whatever constraints we are obliged to be faced with being there socially, economically, or culturally, they're not obstacles, but they become the active components of design. And so the school open outwards and invites, and inwards, a network of intervention, of alliances, and mutual transformation. In order to do so, in order to understand how knowledge begin in relationship, we must intend listening as a design methodology. And before any act of design can be meaningful, we must be present. We must be attuned not only to people, but to context, to systems, and to histories. So designers must move beyond the assumptions and beyond that problem solver kind of attitude and mindset, and instead should go through methodology of like presence and dialogue in order to co-create knowledge. And this resonates with an ecological and a relational understanding of design, so as something that grows from within, and it's not imposed top-down from above. And so we should encourage our students, and we should also, I think, start ourselves by reflecting what might shift in our practice if we truly began with listening as first approach to whatever decision, whatever design that we are trying to embrace. So the school should be a prototype of the world that it wants to imagine. So shared governance, openness, care, experimentation must be part of the institution itself. And we should consider education not as a service, but as commons. This mean— turning the school into an evolving cultural organism, not a space of stillness and closeness, but a space that embraces also fragility, embraces disagreement, embraces contradiction or conflict itself. So the school should become habitat of possibility, space where also the roles, the institutional roles, are completely fluid and everyone is Students, teachers, directors, coordinators are co-responsible and are considered co-responsible for the collective climate of learning that is within the school. And it should be a place where— that has its own language, its own rhythm, its own rituals, and where daily life is completely inseparable by— from the pedagogical exploration. So this slide expands a little bit the notion of design as care by focusing on the pedagogical relationship itself. So as we were saying, teaching is never neutral. It's an act of attention, of presence, of responsibility. So care shouldn't be considered as an like an add-on, but it should be the core of education as seen as a transformation process. And we believe that when students experience that trust, that empathy, that mutual support, they are more likely in the future to develop the confidence and the capacity to care in return, not just about their work, but also about each other, about the communities, the world. So we should highlight the role of care in creating safe space for risk-taking, for experimentation, for vulnerability. And this can start with small pedagogical gestures like asking questions instead of giving answers or holding space for discomfort or for slowness. Okay, that can be a really deep shift for the learning experience. So as we approach the end of this talk, just a few reflections, okay, about what new role the designers should hold. And we should start considering designers not just as solitary genius, but as facilitators of change. So designers are listeners. They are connectors. They are world builders. And education is fundamental to cultivate this mindset. So a mindset rooted in care, in ethics, in imagination. And designers must learn to inhabit systems, to work across scales, and to engage with both material and immaterial invisible forces. OK? So they should become these agents of translation and able to hold contradictions, to mobilize collectives, to imagine differently, imagine otherwise. And this vision of the designer aligns more with the figure of a mediator, of a cultural agent, of someone whose strength lies not in the control, on its capacity to control, but in the capacity to host and sustain complexity. So I will finish with sort of like a call to action to rethink education, which means to commit to a different future. A future built on cooperation, on participation, on transformation. And as educators, we're not just like preparing students for the future, but we are inviting them to co-create it, to co-create the future. And so we imagine schools as shared infrastructures, as platforms for the commons where pedagogies built in the plural, and where knowledge is not extracted top-down, but it's generated through presence, through action, through relational care. And we believe this is not utopic, okay? This is not a utopia. It's a commitment for like a slow, long, careful work of cultivating spaces to make learning a collective, a transformative, and a situated act and practice. And so we believe that education must be an act of collective world-making. And design, at its best, should begin with listening, should grow through relation, and should manifest in shared change. And also, The future of education shouldn't be considered like a pedagogical model, but a process. It's an ongoing movement. And to educate is not to shape someone else, but it's to design the condition for mutual transformation to happen. So a school is not a place that we pass through, but it's a form of life that we shape together. And so my, My hope, my wish is that we can hold space for this unplanned and emergent and for the plural because there is where the new can take root. Thank you very much. So— Thank you. I don't know if there's any question. I don't know if this works, actually.

Yeah.

If you could add your questions in Slido, that would be great.

Or we can just— Yeah.

How do you teach your best? Oh, well, yeah, it's what we were just saying. We have to learn how to get in relation. I don't know who asked this question, but— oh, hi. We have to learn how to get in relation. That's the main try, like, input that we should give our students. So learning as a process and designing as a process of mutual relation and a mutual transformation that we try and bring on together. So it's really this shift in my opinion from trying to get out with your individual talent and instead trying to understand that the value lies in the— in a sort of like collective co-creation process. And that it's what also applies to corporate work, I believe. Is this contradicting Musk's statement? Oh yeah, totally. Absolutely. Yeah, I believe it's the opposite. I mean, like, should any of us believe that the fundamental weakness is empathy? I believe it's completely the opposite. I believe, you know, it's should be considered as the main strength. And I mean, here we're talking about artificial intelligence and we're talking about technology. And instead, if we see technology and artificial intelligence as a tool to build a world that it's more focused on empathy and on listening and to understanding each other, I think it would be the perfect match. Is the commercial value of enrollment in students' net promoter— I'm not sure I understand this question. Could you please explain that further? Is the commercial value of enrollment in students' net promoter scores driving class content? I, I don't get the I don't know who asked that. If you could please explain. Yeah.

My question— there's no microphone, but I have a very loud voice. In the world of merger and acquisition, so many universities are now becoming small universities in much larger ecosystems. And so the commercial drive— the commercial drive for more and enrollment rather than classroom content, because I do both university and industry. And what students think of the content seems to be driving more of what's happening in the classroom in my experience. I completely agree with your approach. I just wonder, are you challenged where, well, that's what the students want, and so you're not allowed to do what your vision is? How are you seeing that? And from the group—

I'm not sure I understood what you believe that the student wants. Sorry, I can't hear it. I don't know if maybe we could pass a microphone. Sorry about that. I'm sorry.

No, it's OK. It's OK. Because it was very hard to write this question. It was very hard to write this question in a very small way. And so I let AI do it. And now no one understands it.

Exactly.

And I'm on the AI panel, so there you go. No, in the world where so many universities are now being acquired by other larger organizations, the commercial value of enrollment and what students think of the classroom and getting a good score from the student is often now being told back to the professor, this is what you need to teach, this is what they want to know. And I bridge both industry and academia. And students don't know what they need to know. So are you finding that the case, and is it hard for you to overcome?

No, I mean, I'm lucky enough to work for an institution which is 100% owned by a foundation, an Italian foundation, and it has not been acquired by a big education group. But I understand what you're saying. Also, that's what I mean with situated pedagogy. So, a pedagogy that is deeply rooted in the context and that it's necessary. It's what makes an institution more, that has more sense. I don't want to say more valuable, but having more sense than another one within a context, because you have to work with the context you are in. You have to work in that relation with the city, the territory, and you don't have to work with simulation or case studies, I believe. You have to work with the real process and the real problems that you, that the whole context is within and navigates in. And so really when I was asking myself, what is the new role of a school if it's not anymore about transmission of knowledge? But it's exactly the opposite. So before, we were intending schools as closed spaces where you would get in, you would acquire knowledge, because that's the space the limited space that contained the knowledge, and then you should be shaped within that little confined space. Now it's exactly the opposite. The space of knowledge is much bigger than the school. It's all outside the school. And so the school shouldn't hold you in. It should push you out. As soon as you get in a school, you should just be pushed out to the world and facilitated by the school networks Even commercial networks, even a network with industries, with companies, but that what like that the movement should be opposite. You shouldn't be hold in, you should be pushed out and get in relationship and get in the world. So yeah, in that sense, I believe that that must be extremely situated, extremely contextualized. I don't know if I answered your question. You're welcome, thanks. What effect does this have on the products of the future? Bit different from the products of today. Maybe it's going to be products that we really need because they're going to be designed in a process that is shared and it's questioned through the process. So I believe that could be a scenario that I hope. How is AI being embraced in the curriculum? How does it impact the craft? It's a huge question, but I believe that AI should be used for this kind of process. So there's many tools that, for example, facilitate peer-to-peer learning through AI. So if we imagine technology and AI as a tool to facilitate this methodology that we're trying to get within our, curricula within our approach, then I believe it could be of great benefit and impact the school very positively. I don't know if there's any more question. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you.