COVID-19 will have lasting impact upon our teaching methodologies and learning outcomes, from primary school through higher education. For design schools specifically, this pandemic has reinforced the importance of collaborative design processes across multiple disciplines and modes of inquiry. In April 2020, Phil Bernstein, an Associate Dean at Yale, stated: “As educators, we’re going to have to be super clear about why and how we are training the next generation of architects—and how they’re relevant in the post-pandemic world.” While he was addressing an uncertain employment climate for architects, his comments are relevant to broader discussions involving all design professions. In our case, COVID-19 provided an opportunity to put disciplinary, proprietary, and conventional academic design goals aside in order to meaningfully engage the needs of our community…
