Who are the new millennium Interdisciplinary Designers?

They are the first wave of the next renaissance...
    ...the broad overview innovators.
    ...the can-do creative problem solvers.
    ...the makers of the built-environs of the future.

Interdisciplinary Designers at the International School of Art + Design of Finlandia University use the integrated skills and creativity of product designers, architectural-space planners and sustainable systems designers to engage issues of function, taste, comfort, health, safety, environmental stewardship and universal access. 21st century Interdisciplinary Designers are designers who don't fit into prescribed boxes. They specialize at being non-specialists. They are adaptable, flexible, and quite comfortable crossing professional boundaries to create integrated concepts that solve real problems for real people.

The results of diverse design disciplines impact all of us every single day. Whether we are at work or play, communing with others or seeking solitude, design impact is inescapable. It is the bed you sleep in and the bedroom itself, the bathing space, fixtures and accessories, the kitchen layout, implements and appliances, modes of transport, camping and hiking gear, two wheelers, skate boards and snow boards, your laptop, your phone, your music system and the pack you carry them all in.

In the new millennium, conceptual design is evolving to integrate all of these elements. The Interdisciplinary Design program at Finlandia University provides the vision and the path to realize that evolutionary integration.

Interdisciplinary Design can be found at Finlandia University's Portage Campus, located in the Jutila Center for Global Design & Business. It is where all of the International School of Art & Design programs, studios, equipment and facilities are housed.

The Jutila Center is a business incubator with both local and international scope, and the Center nurtures and supports new entrepreneurs. When Jutila Center projects are combined with The Finlandia-ISAD project-based learning approach, it provides opportunities for student designers to learn while working for Jutila Center clients.

Click here to visit the Sustainable Keweenaw Resource Center (SKRC) Website

Another component of the Jutila Center is the Finlandia University Sustainable Keweenaw Resource Center. The SKRC is both a Keweenaw community green directory online, and an on-the-ground destination where community members can gather for meetings, review books/periodicals/brochures on sustainability, inspect green product samples, or maybe just interact with the ‘What is Sustainable Keweenaw?' Ideas Board. At the SKRC, green businesses and organizations post green resources in the form of products, materials and services.

ISAD Interdisciplinary Designers draw on the SKRC to find meaningful community design projects and collaborations and test their sustainable systems design skills by applying them to community design challenges.

The International School of Art & Design at Finlandia University invites you to study design that really works.

Interdisciplinary Design empowers 21st century designers by weaving together a wide range of traditional hand skills with state-of-the-art technological know-how - the keys for unlocking the non-traditional, state-of-the-world challenges and enhancing the quality and substance of life in the new millennium.

Who are the new millennium Interdisciplinary Designers?

Maybe you're one of them.