Design students Ramon Coronado (Graphic Design) and Diane Jie Wei (Product Design) interview a family in the Campamento San José outside Santiago, Chile, as part of field research for the Safe Agua studio. Lead Faculty: Liliana Becerra (Product Design), Penny Herscovitch and Dan Gottlieb (Environmental Design).
Core 77: Why does design for social impact belong in design schools?
Mariana Amatullo: Design for social impact is undoubtedly a piece of an art and design education that is exploding with enormous force across the top institutions around the country and internationally. What's exciting to see is that it's positioning design at the center of the global issues affecting us today. It's a space that's inviting collaboration with other disciplines outside of the art and design world, disciplines like: science, business, engineering, and policy, to name just a few. This is great for design, and beyond that—it's also great for the world. There's a potential for solving some of the big problems that confront us because designers have the ability to seek opportunities and see solutions where others can't. It's part of their education and training, a training that pushes them to search for meaningful ideas that can become actionable.)
C77: How is Art Center, where you head up Designmatters, incorporating design for social impact into its curriculum?
MA: This September, Art Center is launching a Designmatters Concentration in art and design for social impact. For us, it's a great chance to educate artists and designers to think about becoming involved in local, national and global issues right at the strategic and leadership levels, the beginning of the life-cycle so to speak of an issue, instead of coming at it at the end to simply style or package a cause. For our students, it's a great chance to connect academic practices to design-based explorations of real world issues. They have the opportunity to step into this space while still a student; at the same time, they're also asked to step up in the way they look at, confront, research and address real world issues.
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