ROBERTO GARZA SADA CENTER FOR ART, ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN AT UDEM
The Industrial Design program at the Universidad de Monterrey (UDEM) was founded in 1972. In 2021, Industrial Design at UDEM is one of the most prestigious programs in Mexico.
The Industrial Design Department, through its academics and its students, aims to train professionals capable of understanding and working with problems that provide positive impacts beyond the classroom, for our communities and for the world. The Industrial Design program within the School of Architecture and Habitat Sciences, focuses on making our city a humanly-intelligent city and stand out as the Latin American leader in this matter.
The University, projects and teachers are dedicated to providing the tools to understand how design can affect our environment in a multifaceted way. From the beginning of the Industrial Design program, UDEM students collaborate with other public and private institutions to develop knowledge in ergonomics, morphology, effective communication and packaging, among many other subjects. They develop projects that involve practical challenges to manage the lifecycle of a product, innovate, and, most importantly, prioritize sustainability for the environment.
We promote, generate and support numerous interdisciplinary activities, along with Graphic Design, Engineering in Sustainable Innovation & Energy, Architecture, and Interior Design, among other majors. To date, this approach has helped us create a learning atmosphere that closely resembles the students’ future careers in the industry, giving them the opportunity to gain collaborative experience and skills to continue life-long learning.
UDEM students stand out with international projects. Every semester, we participate in international competitions, congresses and other similar ventures. We have invited national and international renowned designers to our school—most recently, Javier Verdura, Tesla’s Design Director, who taught classes for eight architecture and design majors at UDEM during one semester.
So, as the prestige of the degree has been growing in the last 10 years, we believe this is due in particular to the commitment of the University´s professors. They have great national and international experience in teaching, research and in the industry. Most importantly, our professors are motivated to share their knowledge, teaching integrity and demanding the highest quality in all deliverables. In addition, they count on one of the most robust learning infrastructures in the continent: the Roberto Garza Sada Center for Art, Architecture and Design, created by the Pritzker-Prize winner Tadao Ando. This facility houses classrooms and a large number of workshops and laboratories equipped with state-of-the-art machines and equipment. Yet, during the current pandemic, we are far from this building and the university community. Still, once again, the teachers have taken on the task to complete the student development processes in excellence, creating new ways of virtual teaching and learning so that, when we return, we can have fun learning together safely.
Now, we will show you a multi-award-winning project, which encompasses much of what I have talked about before: “Redesign of the immobilization equipment applied in road accidents.” With Carlos Alberto Chaveznava Treviño, the project’s advisor, students have addressed the issue of traffic accidents, events that constitute one of the biggest problems in the urban environment. As a result, the team managed to reduce the operation time of the paramedical care protocol, increased the scores of the products in medical questionnaires related to the patient’s comfort level and improved the resistance level of the materials. We are proud to present this project carried out by Karen Paola Santaella Sosa, Mariana Margarita Lara Díaz, José Antonio Sepúlveda Velázquez, Paulina Guerra Castro and Alexis Ruiz Serhan [pictured: top right].
Finally, I want to mention that our digital magazine, DinnJournal [pictured, top left]. It’s a magazine that compiles the most special projects carried out by our students, semester after semester, as well as some articles that talk about our former students, our teachers, events and the competitions in which we participate. To us, this is small but significant sample of what this major is about and how UDEM approaches Industrial Design education in Mexico, and more precisely, how we thrive for constant innovation and search for knowledge to be shared.