Design Otherwise: Transforming Design Education in the Arab Region

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How can we study and teach design in a way that is participatory and socially engaged In this timely book, Danah Abdulla challenges us to imagine a design education and design culture that moves beyond Eurocentric and neoliberal frameworks. Drawing on learnings from work with design students, educators and designers in the Arab region, with a particular focus on Jordan and featuring examples from Lebanon, Egypt, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, Abdulla creates a dialogue with who have most at stake in education to imagine how we can develop a collaborative, contextually-based, and socially-relevant design education. By first contextualising higher education and design education in the region and examining the issues and challenges that are pertinent to the development of curricula and pedagogy, such as power, bureaucracy, language, and access, Danah Abdulla considers the purpose and relevance of design education in contemporary post-colonial societies. She explores regional identity and class divisions between the East and West in relation to the development of design cultures in cities, in addition to different perceptions of design and its value. Abdulla highlights designs role in society and the models of curricula and pedagogy appropriate for developing contextually-situated design education. Outlining skills and strategies for equipping future designers, she proposes new forms of practice and an actionable framework for developing design education.

Author Bio

Danah Abdulla is a designer, educator and researcher interested in new narratives and practices in design that push the disciplinary boundaries and definitions of the subject. She is a Reader in Anti/Post/Decolonial Histories, Theories, Praxes at the Decolonising the Arts Institute at the University of the Arts London. Danah is the author of Designerly Ways of Knowing: A Working Inventory of Things a Designer Should Know (Onomatopee, 2022), a founding member of the Decolonising Design platform, and founded Kalimat Magazine (2010-2016), an independent, non-profit publication about Arab thought and culture www.dabdulla.com.