The College of Design aims to make an impact in the world in specific areas of excellence: sustainability and social justice, digital design and fabrication, world heritage and culture, urban and rural outreach, and product and innovation design. We asked four CDes pairs whose collaborations represent importnat themes of the new college to introduce, in their own words, their work and projects.

Sustainability

Mary Guzowski, associate professor, School of Architecture

As an ecological design educator and researcher, I am concerned with how our species dwells on this amazing Earth and how ecological design matters in the creation of a sustainable world. I am always considering the question: "what needs to be done next"?

The new College of Design provides a forum to connect the design disciplines. During the past several years I have led efforts in renewable energy, eco-affordable housing, and our new M.S. program in sustainable design. I work with colleagues to explore the architectural implications of global warming and zero emission design. I see the possibility of creating interdisciplinary initiatives in sustainable design education and research, including the development of a sustainable design lab to support design education, practice, and research.

Students are an inspiration for my work. They see both the opportunities and the challenges of their future, and they are committed to sustainable design. I remain optimistic that there is a great transformation occurring within the design professions. I would like the College of Design to be the first in the country to develop a Hippocratic Oath for Designers, so that we may educate design professionals to "do no harm" and to actively participate in the healing of the Earth.

John Carmody, director, Center for Sustainable Building Research

The strong interest in sustainability reflects a growing societal recognition of the need for change. "Sustainability" can be seen as a framework to gather different disciplines around common goals of improving the environment, the economy, and our communities. The Center for Sustainable Building Research (CSBR) is in a unique position to assist in transformation through teaching, research, and outreach to the professions, government and nonprofit agencies, and the public.

The CSBR contributes significantly to teaching by providing expertise and faculty in several courses, including those in the new sustainable design track in the M.S. program. Future research opportunities that could involve students include the development of a sustainable new city on University-owned land in Rosemount (the U-More Park project), as well as efforts to green the campus and our own college. Meeting sustainability issues requires interdisciplinary approaches. I look forward to strengthening partnerships within our college, across the campus, and with the professional community to work toward a more sustainable world.

InformeDesign®

Denise Guerin, professor, interior design, and InformeDesign coordinator

Caren Martin, assistant professor, interior design, and InformeDesign director

Planning for InformeDesign began in the fall of 1999 after we attended a design research summit in La Jolla, California, where 75 design practitioners and researchers discussed the relationship between research and practice. We came away from that event with a mission to bring researchers and practitioners together. Researchers were writing in language that was not understood by practitioners, and practitioners did not know where to look for research that was applicable to their design work -- moreover, they did not have the time to engage in this activity. InformeDesign, www.informedesign.umn.edu, fulfills the need.

InformeDesign transforms findings from scholarly research (identified from over 170 refereed journals) into "practitioner-friendly" design criteria and key concepts. The site is a knowledge management system, including over 1,600 research summaries; Implications, a monthly newsletter; and Web casts. The research summaries are written by undergraduate and graduate students from around the University.

Since its launch in January 2003, the impact and value of InformeDesign continues to increase, now serving 75,000 design practitioners (architects, graphic designers, housing specialists, interior designers, landscape architects, and urban designers and planners) and educators/researchers and students in those fields around the world.

InformeDesign is an excellent outreach and engagement tool that improves the designed environment through research. This mission supports the University's goal to become one of the top research institutions in the world and positions College of Design faculty and students in a prime seat to add to global design knowledge.

Design Mapping

Janet Abrams, director, Design Institute

Peter Hall, senior editor, Design Institute

At the end of March 2006 we breathed out at last with the publication of the Design Institute's (DI) second book, Else/Where: Mapping -- New Cartographies of Networks and Territories. After three intense years of research, writing, commissioning, and editing, the 320-page anthology had crossed the ocean from its Belgian printers and finally made it into bookstores and onto Amazon.com.

The culmination of the DI's first series of research projects on mapping, initiated in 2002, Else/Where: Mapping draws together ideas and images from a huge swath of fields, both within and beyond the known map of "design." As such, it is exemplary of the kind of transformative interdisciplinary research the new College of Design aims to produce.

Over the summer we and the book's graphic designer, Deborah Littlejohn, took Else/Where: Mapping on tour, hosting mini-symposia in New York, Amsterdam, and San Jose, featuring several of its geographically-dispersed contributors.

Helped by its new blog, www.elsewheremapping.com, launched in April, and by enthusiastic reviews (in journals such as Architecture, Cartography, ICON, and Eye), over half the first print-run had been sold by November 2006, in what the book's distributor, University of Minnesota Press, described as "torrid" sales for a scholarly publication.

The book was the capstone of Deb Littlejohn's prolific term at the DI, where she served as design fellow (aka art director) from February 2002 through October 2006, when she relocated to Raleigh, NC, to join her husband Santiago Piedrafita, now chair of graphic design at North Carolina State University. Deb will be hard to replace!

World Heritage Studies

Robert Mack, adjunct professor, architecture, and principal, MacDonald and Mack Architects

Arthur Chen, associate professor, architecture and CWHS director

In 2004 the Center for World Heritage Studies (CWHS) established a cooperative agreement with the UNESCO World Heritage Center to undertake research and service projects throughout the world. A major focus of the agreement is to assist with the preservation of endangered World Heritage Sites in developing countries.

Our first venture has been to assist with the preservation of the Icheri Sheher, an ancient walled city, and associated structures in Baku, Azerbaijan. While the walls themselves date from the twelfth century AD, important buildings within the walls date from the sixth century BCE to early twentieth century AD. The area is subject to both demolition of existing buildings and new development, which has led to it being placed on UNESCO's List of World Heritage Sites in Danger.

In September 2005 we and professor Bruno Franck visited Baku to better understand the nature of the city and to discern what would be reasonable for a team from Minnesota to accomplish. After meetings with government officials and representatives from the Azerbaijan University of Architecture and Construction (AzUAC), we agreed to work with students and faculty from the AzUAC to develop a much-needed inventory of buildings and structures within the walls.

We left in May 2006 with a team of eight students and two additional faculty. For three weeks we worked with a group of some 20 students and four faculty from AzUAC. The project was an excellent example of the mission of the University and CDes in action: teaching, research, and outreach. All the students gained new knowledge in the history and culture of Azerbaijan as well as specific preservation-related knowledge and skills. At the same time, the database we designed for the project as a preliminary research effort was modified almost daily during our time in Baku. Finally, our work will form an important part of a management plan for the Icheri Sheher, the first step in removing the site from the endangered list.