The Cold War revisited: The history and pedagogy of the industrial design programme at METU

2025-01-01
The onset of the Cold War after World War II strengthened Turkey’s military, political, and economic coalition with the West, and the US containment policy set the background for the earlier efforts to support local crafts through design aid and link the Turkish economy with the market economies of the West. The establishment of Middle East Technical University (METU) as a regional technical university with education in English was part of a similar development program that directly invested in developing quality human resources interconnecting the periphery and the centre. In the case of METU, the alliance of foreign expertise and local commitment gave rise to a unique regional university modelled after the North American campus university system. METU Department of Industrial Design has developed a distinct design education pedagogy influenced by the METU campus culture, its emphasis on critical thinking, and the established studio education practices at the Faculty of Architecture; the systematic collaboration practices with external actors have also characterised the design studio pedagogy of the department. The department has developed a design research milieu at the graduate level, not only on par with global developments, but also in generative dialogue with undergraduate design studio education practices.
Citation Formats
F. Korkut, The Cold War revisited: The history and pedagogy of the industrial design programme at METU. 2025.