University of Melbourne's student showcase spotlights the "messy and real work of design"

Promotion: in a time where AI can generate a design in seconds, the University of Melbourne's Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning's showcase has pivoted away from displaying students' final pieces to focus on the experimentation behind their projects.

MSDx Winter is an ongoing experimental platform that spotlights students' design processes throughout their mid-year term, "revealing the raw, messy and real work of design".

As part of the initiative, students share their unfinished projects and acknowledge the complexity – and often mistakes – behind their design process, in a bid to evolve and respond to a project.

On display are unfinished ideas in sketchbooks and prototypes, displaying the students' thought processes and the cultural, social, and political context behind their designs, which the university says is often not revealed in student showcases.

By focusing on how ideas evolve – instead of the final, polished projects – the platform celebrates ideation, highlighting the processes that students go through to produce their final designs.

According to the faculty, which also incorporates the Melbourne School of Design, revealing the work behind final designs is more important than ever in a time of generative AI, which is reshaping the landscape of design education.

The faculty explained that while AI can produce a plausible design, image or body of work in seconds, the process by which it creates something "is often opaque and its outputs derivative".

Although the University of Melbourne has taken this step, the university said that it is critically engaging with AI,  exploring its limitations and potentials.

Yet, despite embracing the technology, it says that AI lacks the capacity to engage deeply in the design process, and MSDx Winter is a bid to demonstrate that.

The platform also intends to demonstrate how the approach to design education is shifting across the university as a whole, and how it is placing greater emphasis on hands-on making, collaboration and discussion, while becoming more attuned to the "footprints" designers leave – culturally, politically and economically.

"We are increasingly placing emphasis on revealing the people, ideas, and values embodied in the work; the material, cultural and political systems behind buildings and places; the before-and-after flickering either side of the image, whether in the seminar discussion, sketchbook, or code fragments that produce it, or the living places and material futures that emerge from it," said Melbourne School of Design director Dan Hill.

"Design is always a work-in-progress, as people and places are also work-in-progress. So 'showing our workings' is something we celebrate."

To learn more about MSDx Winter, visit the university's website.

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This article was written by Dezeen for University of Melbourne as part of a partnership. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here. 

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