Heidi Schlegel

Heidi Schlegel, NCIDQ,  is an architectural designer, who's work emphasizes sustainability.  Her research and educational focus is on developing systems for creative intelligence, design thinking, collaboration and integration of international opportunities for collaboration.  In her personal time (when she finds it) she enjoys cooking, travel, her pets and Monty Python movies.  Read her perspective on a few critical thinking questions here:

1. How do you teach or model applied critical thinking?

Critical thinking is at the core of the design process.  Interior Design is a human centered approach to architecture.  We have to develop an integral understanding of the varied perceptions, experiences and needs of diverse communities in order to develop an appropriate spatial program: a preliminary analytic process.  These findings are then applied to the synthesis of the architectural response.  Early 20th century designer Eileen Gray  articulated these ideas most succinctly: "To create, you must first question everything". 

In 2015, I attended a design conference where I met the Chair of a design program at an all-female university in Saudi Arabia.  We started dialogues about how we can best challenge our students to critically think and expand their often limited perceptions of the world.  This brief conversation ended up becoming the start of a now 7-year collaboration and the creation of an annual global cyber-charrette for design students: culturalSYNERGY.  culturalSYNERGY brings students together in virtual environments to co-design artifacts addressing diversity and intersecting cultural identities. Since the first iteration in 2016, we have engaged over 500 students of 122 nationalities in design tasks that aim at promoting a better understanding of the ‘Other’, providing a creative space for inclusive and equitable co-creation to promote democratic practices and values in our future design citizens.  Topics have included: sustainability, design psychology, design for displacement and cultural bias among others.  The task is usually articulated to the students in a single sentence project brief with the goal of putting students "off balance"; requiring them to critically analyze and negotiate the intent and meaning of the task as well as the final design outcome.  This level of instability is intentional to push critical thinking and creativity through risk taking. 

2. Why do you think applied critical thinking is important in your domain or role?

As an educator and a designer, I consider this process of questioning to be integral to the pathway to creating designs of significance. Achieving spaces which go beyond a pleasing aesthetic but delve into feeding the human spirt both physically and mentally.   Architecture can enable or disable. Sadly, too often architectural disablement seems the norm.  To empower our future designers to break this paradigm and derive new solutions requires critical thinking.

3. Can you share a story where quality applied critical thinking was key to your success?

To share a single story is difficult with the depth and breadth of the role of critical thinking in my profession.  In every design I create, I apply critical thinking.  In recent years, my design work has focused on sustainable residential construction.  The prevalence of homogenized housing that not only lacks sense of place and meaning but amplifies architectural disablement is overwhelming in our society today.  The designs I create attempt to challenge these models and break the expected architectural paradigm.  Without questioning "what is" and  focusing on "what if", creativity could not exist and we would be forced to exist within a broken system.  This is especially poignant when you consider the need for aging in place, and reducing the environmental footprint of the built environment.  Critical thinking is the nucleus these successful design outcomes.

4. How do you use critical thinking in other areas of your life outside of RIT? And any last critical thoughts?

When you integrate the core value of "questioning everything" into your cognitive processes, it seeps into every corner of your life.  Whether debating a  political dialogue, deciding what ingredients to use in cooking, or even buying a car; critical thinking applies.  I can't watch a movie without questioning beyond the obvious (yes, that sometimes ruins a movie)!  I consider critical thinking to be core to living an engaged, interested and interesting life!