Basic Design Education in Industrial Design: Structures and Interdisciplinary Approaches in Turkey

The interdisciplinary education model can be defined as a way of dealing a problem or transferring knowledge through the integration of different perspectives. In this context, the basic design education programs of industrial design departments, which are configured within different faculties in Turkey, facilitate an interdisciplinary approach to be modeled and examined. All factors that influence the process and the outcomes of basic design education in industrial design are important to examine the effects of an interdisciplinary collaborative approach in design education. In this study, the basic design education studio processes in the departments of industrial design are examined with respect to the faculties they are involved in and the academic backgrounds of the course instructors in order to determine the effects of cooperation in basic design education. The semi-structured interviews conducted with the course instructors constitute the method of the study. In accordance with the information obtained, the curriculum formations of basic design studios have been compared. In line with these comparisons and analysis of the process, the effects of the interdisciplinary cooperation in basic design education in industrial design is discussed.