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Rethinking "design thinking" as a curricular exercise takes on extra cache as the Ontario College of Art & Design rebrands and repositions itself within the landscape of art and design education. Design, as not just a culturally valuable endeavor, but potentially economically viable endeavor, becomes more of a way of thinking than a profession or series of professions within this new definition. How does this effect design education? How does this change how design theory needs to be taught? What are some of the positive repercussions of reframing design theory? Sustainability becomes a major part of this transformation as global economies and conventional modes and forms of production become obsolete and ineffective following the economic meltdown. How can we get beyond the hyperbole and make design relevant and how will this potentially make sustainability more substantial for all of us? An embedded thesis of this paper is to include design in engineering in an embedded, but more substantial way, perhaps through teaching design theory in more disciplines disguised as sustainability theory.

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design theory, education, sustainability