Interdisciplinary Design Thinking in Architecture Education

This book explores the creative potential for architecture curricula to integrate solid interdisciplinary thinking in design studio education.

Annotated case studies, both from academic institutions and from professional practices, provide examples of interdisciplinary engagement in creative design work, highlighting the challenges and opportunities of this approach. Cases are from a diverse selection of international collaborators, featuring projects from the United States, Australia, Mexico, Germany, and Italy, and cover a range of project types and scales. Chapters by invited experts offer speculations on current and future models, situating examples within the broader context, and encouraging dialogue between practice and pedagogy. The collection of voices in this book offers critical and provocative lenses, learning from history while forging inventive and creative roles for the architect as practitioner, entrepreneur, strategist, choreographer, activist, facilitator, leader, and teacher.

Interdisciplinary Design Thinking provides insights into the potential of interdisciplinary engagement at the level of foundational undergraduate education, making it ideal for faculty in architecture schools. It will also be of interest to design professionals concerned with interdisciplinary collaboration and how to incorporate similar efforts in their own practices.

Julie Ju-Youn Kim, AIA is an associate professor at Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Architecture, where she founded and currently directs the Flourishing Communities Collaborative, an interdisciplinary research and design lab. Incorporating goals of equity and inclusion in scholarship and design pedagogy, Julie received the 2023 AIA Georgia Educator of the Year and the 2023 ACSA Collaborative Practice Award, for connecting the academy and architectural practice by creating replicable models of engagement to expand equity through access. With support from the New Venture Fund/Public Interest Technology-University Network and Partnership for Inclusive Innovation, Julie’s teaching and research leverages data-driven and quantitative methodologies to solving social and cultural problems in the built environment. Julie is a licensed architect whose publications link her leadership and teaching in pursuit of interdisciplinarity in architecture education, research, and practice. She holds a M. Arch from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and BA from Wellesley College.