Interdisciplinarity and the Essential Tension in the Discipline of Design

The reflection on inter-generational dynamics, and on the role of the inter-trans-actions that can be activated in design, is read in this contribution through an in-depth examination of the notion of discipline as an instrument of inter-generational transmission of knowledge and as a tool for interdisciplinary confrontation. This last aspect came into play in the design debate when it entered the university system in Italy. Since then, the problem of defining disciplinary boundaries and determining its trans-actions with other disciplines – present in the university institutions and competing in the formation of the figure of the designer – has arisen. The composite nature of the discipline of design, in the Essential Tension between disciplinary convergences and divergences, is not yet adequately supported by easily transferable or exemplary methodological processes. The aim is to provide the context of complexity in which to place the very notion of interdisciplinarity and with it its crucial node, that of lexicons and interdisciplinary communication: “communication is crucial. The varying use of language across disciplines might seem a superficial problem, but it is one that must be solved, or misunderstandings will undermine the foundations of the project” (Mind meld, 2015, p. 290).