Learner Centered Design Education

Soumitri Varadarajan
  • 5,0 (3)
  • ÉDUCATION

What if teaching isn’t about delivering knowledge, but about co-creating meaning? In Learner Centered Design Education, Soumitri Varadarajan reflects on 35 years of teaching industrial design. These episodes are not lessons—they are provocations and quiet acts of unlearning. Influenced by Paulo Freire—whose work Soumitri encountered at 25—this podcast invites educators to rethink authority, embrace uncertainty, and imagine classrooms as shared worlds of discovery.

  1. Shadow Self

    -3 H

    Shadow Self

    There are two texts on Derrida, on Artaud. https://kdoutsiderart.com/tag/antonin-artaud/ - For Artaud the works are intended as weapons, not commodities, but they become commodified in any event. How then to restore, to protect, their existence as “gestures, a verb, a grammar, an arithmetic, a whole Kabbalah…that s***s on the other,” to maintain their endurance as “a machine that has breath”? How to preserve the destructive essence (and we should be clear Artaud’s intent was destructive, not merely critical) of Artaud’s project against “the museographic management of its surplus value.” As Derrida puts it: “Will it be possible to do what I am trying to do, to say ‘M***e?’ Will it be possible, either with or without blasphemy, to read and to cite ‘Shit,’ ‘Shit to art,’ to do it then as it must be done, in this great temple that is a great art museum and above all modern, thus in a museum that has the sense of history, the very great museum of one of the greatest metropolises in the new world?” ‘The Theatre of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation’: https://arts3047.wordpress.com/2017/05/08/the-theatre-of-cruelty-and-the-closure-of-representation/ - Whilst Derrida seems to be on the brink of declaring Artaud as a success story that can defy the unravelling of deconstructive theory, he ultimately finds an end to theatre of cruelty using dialectics. The very thing that would seem to make theatre succeed in a mission that texts fail is the thing that undoes theatre as an art form: its existence as transient, finite.

    30 min
  2. Book Chapter: Assemblages of Development

    -4 J

    Book Chapter: Assemblages of Development

    Web space for this episode: https://rawslearn.wordpress.com/2026/04/24/book-chapter-assemblages-of-development/ John Maeda's Tech Report: https://designintech.report/ Capgemini: https://www.capgemini.com/au-en/careers/career-paths/students-and-graduates/ D&I: https://www.design-industry.com.au/ Frog Design: https://www.frog.co/ Jony Ive Salary: Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jony_Ive "In 2011, it was reported that Ive was paid $30 million in base salary with a $25 million stock bonus for the year." Kaizen (Continuous Improvement) - Toyota: https://mag.toyota.co.uk/kaizen-toyota-production-system/ LEAN Toyota production system adopted by cancer unit at St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne: https://www.news.com.au/national/toyota-production-system-adopted-by-cancer-unit-at-st-vincents-hospital-in-melbourne/news-story/8226198e586a660b8a893550bdb35d39 Comparisons of Lean in Healthcare: https://www.anzam.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf-manager/633_ANZAM2011-454.PDF

    39 min
  3. Chance Processes

    -6 J

    Chance Processes

    Also See Jones, J. C. (2021). designing designing (1st ed.).Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350070707 The Diceman speaks -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqSeFjaEczA Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dice_Man John Cage's 4'33'' explained: The music of silence:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bGU9NTJlIo John Cage 4'33":https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTEFKFiXSx4 John Cage about silence:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcHnL7aS64Y MOMA: https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/393 Textile artist Matthew Harris lets a roll of the dicedictate his artistic choices. We spoke to Matthew about his unique creative process, the interplay between paper and textile, and the roles that improvisation and chance play in his art practice. https://www.fibreartstaketwo.com/articles/matthew-harris Hans Arp: https://expressivemonkey.com/element-of-chance-2/ He thought that by giving up control and letting randomelements shape his art, he could tap into the heart of true creativity. Chance in Art and the indeterminacy aesthetic:https://art-newzealand.com/21-chance/ The historian Mommsen estimated that chance accounts for athird of all historical effects. Strindberg wrote a manifesto on its role in art. For the Surrealists it was a means of transcending the barriers of causality and conscious volition. Richter adopted it as a protest against the rigidity of straight line thinking. Duchamp categorised some of his works as 'canned chance'. Arp revered the law of chance as the highest and deepest of laws; as did the great physicist Heisenberg, who, in 1927, sanctified chance ina mathematical formulation. Vesna Jovanovich:https://vesnajovanovic.com/2024/06/27/meticulously-planned-chance-operations/

    10 min
  4. Assemblages of Development 1

    6 AVR.

    Assemblages of Development 1

    This is the first episode on the topic - Assemblages of Development.

    56 min
  5. I am going to Dubai

    14 FÉVR.

    I am going to Dubai

    Dubai is a special kind of place. Following on from that statement is another similar statement - every place is a special kind of place. To go as an ethnographer, as a researcher, as a theorist is a very particular way to look at places. Places in this vein of thinking hold secrets. They tell stories. What secrets does Dubai hold? What does Dubai broadcast, that we do not hear, because we have not tuned in? That is my way of saying that we rush to judge. In doing that, we miss the opportunity to develop a love for, an affection for a place, a people. Links coming soon.

    11 min
  6. D4X

    10 FÉVR.

    D4X

    The Provocation in this episode is: Some engineers view "design engineering" as redundant, believing that true engineering already includes design. If you want to go down the rabbit hole of design engineering is an oxymoron, industrial design engineer is an oxymoron - you will find a lot that is enjoyable. Check it out. Alec Issigonis - the person who visiualized and realized the Mini (Mr Bean Version) was an engineer. And a guru to James Dyson. This Episode is on D4X. As an opener into a series - of episodes that look at what happens when designers work inside manufacturing enterprises. The Author of this Podcast Series? https://soumitri.owlstown.net/ The Website where transcriptions can be found? https://rawslearn.wordpress.com/ NOTE: I dont upload transcripts of all episodes. I do upload transcripts if someone in the audience requests a transcript. These podcast episodes will become text one day. In a book or a paper. Or that is an aspiration I mull over.

    17 min
  7. How can the design of a drug trial inform pedagogy?

    04/10/2025

    How can the design of a drug trial inform pedagogy?

    Do check out live transcriptions for this episode.

    7 min
  8. Is human life span 500 years now?

    04/10/2025

    Is human life span 500 years now?

    Do check out the live transcription as you listen to this episode.

    12 min
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À propos

What if teaching isn’t about delivering knowledge, but about co-creating meaning? In Learner Centered Design Education, Soumitri Varadarajan reflects on 35 years of teaching industrial design. These episodes are not lessons—they are provocations and quiet acts of unlearning. Influenced by Paulo Freire—whose work Soumitri encountered at 25—this podcast invites educators to rethink authority, embrace uncertainty, and imagine classrooms as shared worlds of discovery.

Informations

  • Création
    Soumitri Varadarajan
  • Années d’activité
    2021 - 2026
  • Épisodes
    79
  • Classification
    Contenu explicite
  • Copyright
    © Soumitri Varadarajan
  • Site web de l’émission
    Learner Centered Design Education