Universal design education in India; design challenge as design pedagogy

In last decade the Universal Design education is being experimented by educators all over the world and people tried different ways to teach the concept. Though it has become a worldwide movement today but it has demonstrated limited acceptance amongst architecture, planning and design schools in India. There are no specialized courses on universal design in the country, this is perhaps because the benefits of designing in a more inclusive way are not immediately apparent and also because there are many other pressing issues that require attention. The Center for Human Centric Research (CHCR) housed in School of Planning and Architecture Bhopal organizes an annual National Student Design Competition on Universal Design (NSDC-UD) together with a Hands-on Workshop and Exhibition, to explore creative ways to offer universal design to the students of diverse design disciplines in the country. The center has organized three such events since 2010, and the next is scheduled in 2014. The events provide an intense and experiential universal design understanding to the students. For educators they provide an opportunity to explore design competition as a pedagogical tool to meet educational objectives that the center is striving to include in academic curricula. The paper presents this annual academic event in brief and summarizes the lessons learnt for the contextual aptness of universal design teaching and learning.