The Design Research Institute fosters new knowledge and innovative practice, products and environments through transdisciplinary design research (TDR).

The RMIT Design Research Institute was launched in March 2008 by the Victorian Minister for Industry Innovation and Regional Development.

The Institute’s inaugural Director is Australia Federation Fellow, Professor Mark Burry and the Research Leaders are Professors Leon van Schaik, Elizabeth Grierson, Harriet Edquist and David Mainwarring and Associate Professors Sue-Anne Ware and Laurene Vaughan.

What are the Institute’s objectives?

The Institute develops and funds a new transdisciplinary approach to design research in a terrain at the intersection of education, research and industry. It aims to:

• Build a transdisciplinary design research capability and a community
• Undertake transdisciplinary research and produce knowledge, products and services
• Become internationally renowned for transdisciplinary research and expertise

Transdisciplinary teams of researchers are formed from a diverse range of disciplines including aeronautical and chemical engineering, architecture, fashion, business and applied communications. There are five key project streams; Urban Liveability, Digital Design and Manufacturing, Customising Space, Geoplaced Knowledge and Intervention through Art around which smaller projects cluster.

The research teams address such challenging issues as new urban environments, creating healthy and supportive workplaces, constructing interactive spatial maps and archives, designing performance-enhancing sports garments and examining the role of art in public and private places.

What is the value of transdisciplinary research?

"Designers globally tend to 'drill down' within their fields of expertise in the quest for solutions to sometimes intractable problems. Architects deal with architecture, jewellers with jewellery, and engineers with engineering, industrial designers with products. The challenges that we have set ourselves in contemporary society - global warming, water shortages, increased urbanisation, cannot be addressed by individual design disciplines on their own: designers must work in transdisciplinary teams. 'Transdisciplinary', put simply, means teams of designers who assert their professional expertise within a diverse group of creative thinkers, but in working closely with other design disciplines, enrich their own with new understandings that come from working towards a shared solution or concept."

Prof. Mark Burry, Director, Design Research Institute

What is the Institute’s wider context?

Institute researchers partner locally and globally with education institutions, governments, industries, practices and the community. Teams provide industry access to a broad spectrum of design thinking to find solutions to a complex challenge and to generate opportunities. The Institute also hosts a program of forums and events which promote informed dialogues and introduce its member community to international design innovators and world renowned academic thinkers.