ICSID Interdesign

This thesis is aimed at exploring the ICSID’s Interdesign programme, which since 1971 has brought together professionals from around the world to confront and find solutions to a local challenge of international importance. This research has predominantly used the ICSID Archives at the University of Brighton Design Archives, which is the organization’s official archive repository. The scope of the research is to enlighten traces of a mentality's shift, from a product and user-centred to a systemic one, which takes into account a more complex vision including the relationships between man, environment, society, culture and economy. As a starting point, it revealed that ICSID operated as a nexus of national and international associations, showing how relationships are the foundation of any project capable of having global impacts. The research also highlighted the change of objectives, mentality and vision of an association initially focused exclusively on industrial design, which with the change of the social and environmental situation has opened its doors to include professionals from every sector in the collaboration to solve the greatest challenges of our planet through design-driven innovation. Interdesigns have thus passed from a meeting of international professionals to one of inter - and trans-disciplinary experts, from a viewpoint of product/graphic design to a system perspective. The increasing involvement of different disciplines has followed the increase in the complexity of the problems faced, leading designers to be no longer deus-ex-machina, but participants in a wider collaborative project team comprising local citizens and stakeholders.