An Entropy-Driven Scenario for Future Design Education

Abstract

In a Domus article published in 1998, John Thackara claimed that design would lead by entropy in the future, and he won- dered how to avoid a similar dystopian scenario. As designers, we are aware of how wicked problems are really hard to face and how complexity has increased in these past decades: trans- disciplinary skills are therefore increasingly required. Further- more, we can only achieve incremental improvements to the situation, because a wicked problem typically has no definitive solution (Rittel, Webber 1973, in Erlhoff, 2008): a new mind- set is therefore required, one that is capable of overcoming our traditional one (Morin, 2015), in order to face and manage the complexity. In this short paper, we propose a practice-oriented pilot project for design transdisciplinary education that over- turns the Thackara proposal: we suggest assuming entropy as a new paradigm for design education.