In the face of emerging wicked problems, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration in design education becomes essential for equipping future designers to tackle complex and multifaceted problems. This study explores interdisciplinary collaboration dynamics among design students from diverse fields within a structured Design Sprint setting. A pre-sprint survey (n=23) captured students' initial preparedness and perceptions toward interdisciplinary collaboration. Post-sprint insights (n=17) and in-depth disciplinary reflections (n=16) further revealed how students evaluated collaborative versus independent work outcomes.

The research examined three distinct phases of task-level disciplinary dynamics during conceptual design: idea initiation (divergent conceptual brainstorming), idea iteration (generation of multiple design schemes), and idea refinement (idea convergence and iterative improvement). These stages provided insights into how disciplinary diversity shaped the design process, influencing creativity, problem-solving, and decision-making.

By focusing on the Design Sprint as a replicable educational model, this study contributes to understanding the pedagogical value of interdisciplinary collaboration, offering implications for how design education can address grand challenges through collaborative innovation. In highlighting the power of diverse disciplinary perspectives, the findings underscore the need for integrated, cross-disciplinary approaches in both education and practice to address the pressing technological, environmental, and social challenges of our time.

Architecture, as process and product, has historically been firmly connected to aesthetics and form as fundamental measures of quality. The Architectural profession holds dear the elite image of the architect and the veiled mystique of design, while Architecture schools propagate the myth of design genius via divine spark, subscription to the cult of the sole creator, and the carnivalesque blackbox of creativity. Limited credence is extended to post occupancy and scant weighting falls on lived experience. The present research, part of a pan-national 5-year intersectoral transdisciplinary project on “Quality in Canada’s Built Environment” critically explores pedagogical reform as a fundamental component of systematic overhauls in the way we value, conceive, construct, and occupy the built environment. Education, spanning from K-12, post-secondary and the public ethos, lies at the heart of solutions to deepen design understanding & worth in society. The pan-national project, considering architecture from inception and procurement to construction and use, views the myopic prioritization of aesthetics & form as restrictive, elitist and, inevitably, harmful. Conversely, new visions of environmental design extend beyond the physical realm to embrace culture, social facets, spiritual qualities and so forth. At the centre of a revised model lies ‘lived experience’ – that is, the personal encounters, experiences, meaning and value we each bring to and extract from our interactions in spaces and places. The present paper explores a bold reconsideration of the classroom and studio, as a primary teaching and learning milieu, with a shift from convention and the status quo to awareness of ‘lived experience’ and a more holistic approach to design. The author accepts this pedagogical foray as an opening gesture within, and a provocative counterpoint to, the current system which, arguably, stands out of date, out of synchronization, and out of touch with a dramatically shifting, turbulent and troubled world.

Global challenges such as climate change, displacement, urban inequity, and rapid advancement of technology demand a paradigm shift in how we teach architecture. This paper proposes a pedagogical framework that treats the architectural design studio as a research-driven, interdisciplinary platform to address some of these pressing issues. The framework integrates participatory learning, social sciences research methods, and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) to provide students with the skills and empathy necessary to design impactful, human-centered solutions. The framework’s outcome is demonstrated through one project focused on trauma-informed design (TiD) for displaced populations. The student designed an educational board game, the TiD Challenge, that enables collaboration, creation and critical thinking, allowing participants to understand the social, psychological, and spatial complexities caused by displacement. By assuming stakeholder roles and navigating real-world design challenges, participants develop nuanced design proposals that emphasize safety, adaptability, cultural sensitivity, and biophilic integration. The TiD Challenge deepens participants’ understanding of displacement and highlights the potential of trauma-informed principles in creating supportive and healing environments. While the framework demonstrates a good promise, it also faces challenges, including reliance on advanced technologies, issues of scale, time constraints, and the need for more inclusive participatory processes. To address these limitations, the paper suggests low-tech alternatives, strategies for engaging marginalized groups, and some quantitative metrics for speculating the long-term impact of participatory design. This example emphasizes the critical role of research-driven design studios adopting social sciences and humanities methods in achieving a design education that responds to the changing world. By bridging design and societal needs, the proposed framework serves as an example of empathy, innovation, and equity in architecture, with applications extending to climate adaptation, urban equity, and beyond.