Inside Canadian University Dubai's Bachelor of Design and AI
Design schools around the world are trying to work out how far artificial intelligence should enter the studio. Some educators worry about authorship and artistic integrity, while practices increasingly expect graduates to arrive with AI skills as standard. Canadian University Dubai, established in 2006, is one institution that has chosen to build a degree around that tension.
Its School of Architecture and Interior Design, which has run undergraduate programmes since 2008, recently launched a four-year Bachelor of Design and AI covering product, service and space design. Massimo Imparato, Dean of the school, spoke about how the programme was built, how it protects authorship, and what the designer of the future will look like.
Your school already teaches AI within its architecture and interior design programmes. Why launch a dedicated degree?
Design redefines itself with every generation, and we have a responsibility to offer our students the most advanced education. Our programmes already address sustainability, the circular economy and emerging technologies, and we already teach AI courses within them. Full integration between design and AI can only happen when the two domains come together from the very beginning of a student's educational pathway. Adding AI as a plug-in will never achieve that. That is why we launched the Bachelor of Design and AI, where the integration begins on day one. It redefines pedagogy so that design is assisted and empowered by AI.
Many in the creative community oppose AI in design and art. How do you protect a student's authorship?
In the early years of AI in education, the focus was on authorship. I was in China at the time, and academics were asking how to guarantee ethical use and how to assess student work if we could no longer capture its integrity. An important step was to assess students on their process instead of the final essay or project. A beautiful render could always be judged for its beauty and for how well it represents an idea, yet that is not necessarily where a student's ability lies. Ability lies in the process, in whether the student operated it with full ownership of what they were doing. When we specifically ask students to use AI in a project, we ask them to justify its use and to show how AI acted as a partner in the design process. A beautiful image remains only an image unless the student can prove that the final outcome was fully authored from a curatorial point of view.
AI is moving at great speed. How do you design a programme that stays relevant?
Our school is closely connected with industry. Each programme has an industry advisory board, and we meet its members at least twice a year to discuss market needs and changes. When we first considered an undergraduate programme in design and AI, we held a structured meeting with our board to weigh the pros and cons and test whether it would meet industry requirements. By the time we submitted it to the Ministry of Education for approval, we were confident the analysis was sound. When the programme was announced, a former president of the Royal Institute of British Architects' Gulf chapter called me to say that the industry no longer simply hires designers. It hires designers who are skilled in AI, and that is now a must. The programme also draws on our School of Engineering, which runs a dedicated AI degree. Engineering provides the programming, coding and mathematics, our school provides the design component, and mixed courses integrate the two.
How will the role of the designer change as AI becomes more agentic?
This revolution is moving fast, and honestly, it is unpredictable. We are now moving towards agentic AI, where the complexity will be much broader, and what we can offer students is unprecedented. They will be able to address issues that have always been central to architecture and interior design, such as user needs, comfort and the quality of a workplace, residential or commercial space, using agents that analyse and compare data within minutes to provide solid, data-led solutions. At the beginning, the designer was a pure creator. In the future, the designer will increasingly be an orchestrator. The shift from parametric design to AI is both terrible and fascinating, as you no longer need to code, you only need to prompt. As end users, we may be happy not to know how an interface or a mobile phone works. As designers, we are experts, and we have a responsibility to understand how a platform or technology operates. That is why I believe the next generation of designers still needs competency in programming and coding.
What will graduates be equipped to do?
The programme addresses product design, service design and space design, so it covers far more than architecture or interiors. Graduates of the Bachelor of Design and AI will be able to work as product designers, service designers and space designers, which is completely new. In this sense, we are unique and, I believe, the very first programme to take this direction.
What advice would you give students who feel uncertain about their careers because of AI?
Passion should be the main driver. In China, I saw study decisions driven largely by families making practical choices, such as enrolling a child in architecture because real estate was doing well. The market is so fluid that predictions are very difficult, so I always say follow your passion, as any difficult time can be overcome if you believe in and enjoy what you do. The second piece of advice is to choose undergraduate studies that expand your horizons. Design and AI connects emerging technologies with human-centred design, and society's needs, whether family, individual or workplace, keep evolving and will always need experts to address them. I completely disagree with the idea that AI will destroy the job market. It will change it. Architecture withstood the industrial revolution, the digital revolution, CAD and parametric design, and it will manage the introduction of AI too. I believe AI will be an ally of creativity.
