Enabling Global Collaboration: Mutual language and teaching formats for craft and design

Traditional crafts still in existence and daily use in less industrialized countries, but to a great extend either extinct or deprived of meaning in the technologically 'developed' parts of the world, have an important role to play in creating the ’quality economy’ (Fry 2009). This involves recognizing the value of incremental refinement of tradition and sustainability obtained through cultivation of the culturally and visually sustainable. As a contribution to this development, we propose: 1) The notion of tectonics as a core concept enabling a mutual, cross-cultural design discourse, a structure for courses and studios, and sustainment of local and traditional crafts. And we present: 2) A type of design course/studio that by means of various restrictions of design variations directs attention to the vocabulary of joints and details and to relations of detail to the whole. The tight frame of the studio informed by the theory of tectonics together provides cross-cultural students with a mutual language to discuss intrinsic matters of form.