When Did Design Stop Being “Multidisciplinary?”

To be a multidisciplinary designer today signals a prestige, a privilege even. It’s for those who feel confident enough, or financially secure enough, to move beyond the assembly line and choose their own projects, to move from interest to interest. But it shouldn’t be that way — multidisciplinary is what design has always been. “All universities have been progressively organized for ever finer specialization.

Society assumes that specialization is natural, inevitable, and desirable,” writes Fuller. “Yet in observing a little child, we find it is interested in everything and spontaneously apprehends, comprehends, and co-ordinates an ever-expanding inventory of experiences. Children are enthusiastic planetarium audiences. Nothing seems to be more prominent about human life than its wanting to understand all and put everything together.” That ‘understanding and putting together’ is the design process, even if it’s become harder and harder to truly work in the mode. 

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