The future of design: An academic perspective for the School of Design

This paper looks to the future and to its implications for design as a discipline as well as a transdiscipline. 'Transdiscipline' is used in this sense as a term that recognises the interconnectedness and complexity of the world and the associated need to address this by looking beyond disciplines through the development of a new overarching discourse as well as within and across disciplines using existing discourses. The paper provides a basis for exploring within the context of current and anticipated external and internal constraints what this imagined picture of the future is likely to mean for the School of Design here at QUT and for academic leadership within and through the School. As noted by Matathia and Salzman (1998), 'Marshall McLuhan's repeated urging to 'know the present' is even more pertinent today, for the present is the watchtower from which we view the future’ (p.13) and from which we make decisions that will have implications for us in the future.