The Design Village by Mridu Sahai Patnaik and Paul Hekkert: design education for a changing world.
Eindhoven (Amsterdam) [Netherlands] October 21: What should designers learn when the world they are designing for keeps changing? Beyond mastering tools and techniques, they need to understand systems, question assumptions, and take responsibility for the impact of their work.
Published by BIS Publishers, The Design Village explores what this means for design education itself. Drawing on a decade of experience establishing a pioneering design school in India, Mridu Sahai Patnaik and Paul Hekkert present the school as a living case of how education can be imagined and organised differently.
Their approach reaches beyond adding courses on sustainability or social impact. It asks how a school’s values can shape its teaching, relationships, and everyday learning environments. Central to this vision is the idea of becoming a “villager”: learning as part of a community, with a shared responsibility towards others, locally and globally.
The book is structured around three guiding principles: Impact First, Pedagogy Centric, and Unreasonably Reciprocal. Together, these explore how to place impact at the heart of education, rethink how learning happens, and build reciprocal relationships between students, educators, and partners.
Through interviews, research-based essays, and practical examples, The Design Village examines how educators can:
- nurture compassion and courage in learners;
- develop critical self-direction alongside skills that continually evolve;
- help students unlearn and challenge systemic assumptions;
- break down silos and create diverse environments for learning.
Written for design school leaders, academics, teachers, and students, the book combines reflection with experience from building and running a school. It invites anyone who cares about design education to reconsider what designers need to learn—and how education can help them contribute to the world around them.
Get your copies at https://www.bispublishers.com/the-design-village.html
About the Authors
Paul Hekkert is a design researcher, lecturer, and strategist with more than 30 years of experience at Delft University of Technology’s Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. He served as Professor of Form Theory and head of the Industrial Design department. His books include Vision in Design: A Guidebook for Innovators and Designing for Society. A founding member of The Design Village, he helped shape the school using the Vision in Design methodology.
Mridu Sahai Patnaik works at the intersection of design, architecture, and society. She is co-founder of The Design Village, which she has led since its inception, and a Partner at multidisciplinary architecture practice Studio Archohm. Her work spans education, practice, and cultural curation, including the India Pavilion at the London Design Biennale and bringing the What Design Can Do Festival to Delhi.
Book Details
The Design Village is published by BIS Publishers.
Authors: Paul Hekkert, Mridu Sahai Patnaik
Format: Paperback
Pages: 180
Dimensions: 240 × 165 mm
ISBN: 9789063698348
Publication: Fall 2026
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