Master of Disaster, Design and Development introduced at RMIT
The Master of Disaster, Design and Development (MoDDD), is an innovative new degree from RMIT University’s School of Architecture and Design that will enable students to work internationally in the disaster and development fields. Developed in partnership with the International Federation of the Red Cross and UN-Habitat, MoDDD will explore how design can be used as a strategic tool to help resolve complex global challenges including poverty, natural disaster, and climate change.
The course responds to two important factors in the area of disaster relief and reconstruction. Firstly, the course recognizes the dramatic rise of displacement and destruction of communities and their infrastructure, in the wake of both natural and human-made disasters. There has never been a more important time to respond positively and constructively to these major global challenges.
Secondly, the course acknowledges that despite the now widespread recognition of the need to deliver effective support to these disaster-affected areas, conventional response mechanisms are fundamentally flawed. Disaster response needs to urgently change.
Combining intensive seminars and workshops in Melbourne or Barcelona, online electives and field trips, this course moves beyond the understanding of disaster response as simply a logistics or management challenge, to an understanding of the crucial role of complex and long-term social, environmental and cultural factors. Unless disaster intervention engages with this wider understanding of fragmented communities and social trauma, the short-term housing and infrastructure fixes will sadly be doomed to failure.
The course will expose students to real live disaster situations and provide both practical training for effectiveness in the field, as well as the tools to assess when and how intervention is appropriate and when it is not. Graduates will be able to work in leadership roles in the international disaster and development sector with specialised knowledge of:
• design processes
• Research and development
• Disaster and emergency management
• Planning and policy
• Design focused project management
• Executive leadership
• Disaster recovery program manager or coordinator
• Development program manager or coordinator
• Training and capacity building
Key people
Dr Esther Charlesworth is Associate Professor and the Director of the Humanitarian Architecture Research Bureau (HARB) in the RMIT University, School of Architecture and Design. She is also the founding Director of Architects without Frontiers (Australia), a design non-for-profit organization who have undertaken over 20 projects in 12 countries for communities affected by disaster.
Iftekhar Ahmed is a Research Fellow in the Humanitarian Architecture Research Bureau (HARB), RMIT University
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