INTENSIVES AND EXPERTS: THE DEER PARK STUDIO EXPERIENCE
Year: 2015
Editor: Guy Bingham, Darren Southee, John McCardle, Ahmed Kovacevic, Erik Bohemia, Brian Parkinson
Author: Eales, Rob; Varadarajan, Soumitri; Anand, Parag; Singh, Aditi
Series: E&PDE
Institution: 1Industrial Design Program, RMIT University, Melbourne, 2Department of Industrial Design, School of Planning and Architecture New Delhi, India
Section: Learning Paradigm
Page(s): 550-555
ISBN: 978-1-904670-62-9
Abstract
In July, 2014, The Deer Park Studio was offered as a 12 week course to Australian Industrial Design
undergraduate students. The studio was developed as a companion studio to the The Himalayan
Ecology Project, a Masters level Industrial Design course, run in India in early 2013. During the
transnational studio, teaching staff from Australia and India worked with Australian students in
Australia to develop designs for the residents of Bir, in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh, India.
The Deer Park Studio was developed using 'design for development' and Social Design approaches
and used the report on the delivery and outcomes of the The Himalayan Ecology Project as the
primary document. The design of the studio also included an 'intensive phase' during which the
academics who taught the The Himalayan Ecology Project took part in The Deer Park Studio. For 10
days they attended classes and in collaboration with local staff consulted with the Australian students,
providing contextually rich feedback during the ideation and concept development phase of the studio.
This collaborative teaching phase enabled students to design from within a local context but to
develop designs that would be relevant and useful in Bir. The students were able to mitigate the
limitations of designing for a physically remote and culturally different context and to produce
outcomes that drew on their own design experience as well as the cultural knowledge of the visiting
academics. This paper discusses the design, delivery and outcomes, both student and academic, of
The Deer Park Studio.
Keywords: Social design, design for development, industrial design, design education, transnational design.