Abstract:

The Design course of the University of São Paulo was created in 2006, involving professors of three Departments of the School of Architecture and Urbanism (FAU-USP) and of the Politechnic School (EP USP), School of Business and Economics (FEA USP) and School of Communication and Arts (ECA USP). The design activities were the core of the curriculum. They took up more than half of the timetable of the course, mainly the disciplines offered by the Project Department of FAU, covering the fields of product and graphic design, occasionally taught together or in collaboration with professors of other Schools or Departments. Nearly all the curriculum was made up of compulsory disciplines. The graduation of the first group of students in 2010 provided the opportunity to rethink the course. The coordination of the course – CoC- organized a work team with professors, students and former graduates and performed a diagnosis. Based on the results, the team started working on the proposal of a new pedagogic project in a collective and collaborative manner. The new project has kept to the aim of a five-year-generalist education, which is design-centered. The curricular grid has changed due to a reduction of the number of compulsory disciplines and an increase of the number of the electives, giving the students a wider range of options to choose from. The main innovation was the creation of elective design disciplines called (EDM) Elective Design Modules and (IDM) Integrated Design Modules. Those disciplines run on a bimonthly basis on fixed days of the week in the hope of decreasing the number of simultaneous projects developed by the students, facilitating the integration among students of different levels and providing them with more autonomy so as to make undergraduates partly responsible for their education path. The EDM disciplines involve the development of projects of visual, product and/ or service design taught by professors of the Project Department. The IDM disciplines deal with interdisciplinary projects with the joint responsibility of professors of the Project Department and from other Departments or Schools. The new Pedagogic Project was approved in 2017 and started to be gradually implemented in 2018. The transition between the two curricula should be completed in 2022.

Keywords:

Curriculum design, design course, interdisciplinarity.