Industrial Design education and South African imperatives

Abstract

The first tertiary programme in industrial design in South Africa was offered at the School of Art, Johannesburg (SAJ) at the start of 1963 (Wood 1963:88). The SAJ then became the Technikon Witwatersrand (TWR) in 1979 (Brink 2006:119) and finally the University of Johannesburg (UJ) in 2005 when it was merged with the Rand Afrikaans University (RAU). This was the only programme in industrial design in South Africa for 25 years, until the establishment of a second one at the Cape Technikon1 in 1988 (Verveckken 2007) and a third in 2008 at Tswane University of Technology (TUT). Since the curriculum for any technikon programme was controlled by the convener technikon, which in the case of industrial design was the TWR, the two technikon programmes have maintained many similarities particularly in terms of the curriculum (Verveckken 2007) and the TUT programme has been started by an industrial designer educated at the TWR. Both UJ and CPUT have been required to cater for the growing demand for designers in industry and have only as recently as five years ago been increasingly pressurised to expand areas of design study from vocational training into research at post-graduate level. In keeping with all tertiary offerings in the country, the unique political and economic challenges facing South Africa have demanded a reconsideration of what is taught and how it is taught.