Postcards From: An Intercultural Exchange in Design Education

“Los Angeles, California is glitzy Hollywood Boulevard.” “Laredo, Texas is the dangerous Rio Grande.” What shapes the true cultural identity of a place? Now more than ever, the evolving role of the cultural identity of place is reinforced most strongly by societal and mediatization rather than through active and inclusive intercultural communication. This often leads to misrepresentations and misunderstandings. In teaching culture through design education and using design as a tool to promote cultural knowledge, this discussion presents a conversation between two groups of students led by two collaborating educators from Laredo, Texas (Texas A&M International University) and Los Angeles, California (California State University—Los Angeles). This research serves as a specimen for an active and inclusive intercultural communication exchange project for further application across educational campuses on a local, national, and international spectrum. Through a series of exercises, students are asked to delve into the cultural identity crises in their respective cities. The students are also asked to investigate their own perceptions about the other city, thus identify-ing the societal representation of that city. Finally, the students are asked to exchange their discoveries. This preliminary discussion explores how the cultural identity of a place is understood to support or reveal societal or mediatization. The findings demonstrate important perspectives of cultural design and how to better understand place, self, and connection. This ongoing experiment leads not solely to the issue of design education, but of how to learn and teach design in a world of cultural silos, change, and diversity.