Abstract

“Los Angeles, California, is glitzy Hollywood Boulevard.” “Laredo, Texas, is the dangerous Rio Grande.” Now more than ever, our understanding of the world we inhabit is constructed and defined by mediatization—how the media shapes and frames society—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 an example of an active and inclusive intercultural communication exchange project for further application across educational campuses on a local, national, and international level. Through a series of exercises, students are asked to delve into the realities of their respective cities. The students are also asked to investigate their own perceptions about the other city, thus identifying the societal representation of that city through the media. Finally, the students are asked to exchange their discoveries. This preliminary discussion explores how our perceptions of the world are constructed both to reveal and learn how to combat mediatization. The findings demonstrate important perspectives of cultural design and how to better understand place, self, and connection. This ongoing experiment pertains not solely to the issue of design education, but also to how learning and teaching design is affected by a world of cultural silos, change, and diversity.