Transnational experiences: India and China in Australian industrial design education

Abstract

Educational experiences that equip undergraduate Australian Industrial Design students with a practice of design capable of effective engagement with Asian cultures and industries are of increasing professional importance. To enable this, the Industrial Design Program at RMIT University has had to shift paradigms. Long-held and essentially Eurocentric notions of the discipline have given way to being independent in its view of what the future of Australian Industrial Design would look like and where it's main locales of disciplinary engagement would be. The rapid economic development of India and China, and their respective differences in design capabilities to those of Australia, has provided an opportunity to build transnational design relationships through a program of integrated curricula and funded student mobility with partner institutions in China and India. This paper discusses the key issues of training Australian Industrial Designers for transnational practice