As design education is undergoing a transition from an ‘arts and crafts’ oriented discipline to an academic field of ‘theory and research’, the need for a different model of design education is becoming increasingly visible. Even though design is an integrative discipline that has emerged from the interaction of several other fields, more needs to be done in order for design to be accepted as such by the wider academic community. While on one side design can be seen as a field of practice and applied research; on the other, design can be seen as a field of thinking and pure research. However, in order for designers to be accepted as researchers by other disciplines, design education needs to be revisited and cross-disciplinary research methods need to be introduced in design education.
In this paper, I will examine cross-disciplinary design education and research. In doing so, I will narrow down cross-disciplinarity as a combination of multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research models that can be introduced at various stages of design education. In addition to this, I will address some of the challenges and the opportunities associated with cross-disciplinary education and research as a whole, while highlighting the prospects of bridging the cross-disciplinary research gap.