This year’s Integrated Design Research Conference, themed “The Creative Wave”, explores the fluid and evolving nature of creativity within contemporary design contexts. The conference invites participants to engage with how creative practice moves across shifting cultural, technological, and ecological landscapes, responding to change while generating new possibilities. It considers how design operates as a force in motion, continuously adapting, reinterpreting traditions, and shaping emerging futures.

The Creative Wave positions design as an active and responsive process, where imagination initiates exploration and adaptation sustains transformation. It encourages a rethinking of how designers navigate uncertainty, collaborate across disciplines, and contribute to meaningful change within diverse social and environmental contexts.

The conference will explore the following sub-themes through the lens of the creative wave:

Society and Culture: Investigating how design, infused with creative intelligence, responds to shifting cultural narratives, social complexities, and collective aspirations.

Vernacular Knowledge and Practice: Highlighting the role of indigenous, local, and traditional knowledge systems as vital sources of creative insight and adaptive intelligence in design.

Economy and Industries: Examining how creative intelligence drives innovation, value creation, and transformation within economic systems and industrial practices.

Design Pedagogy and Thinking: Exploring how design education cultivates creative intelligence—through emerging methodologies, interdisciplinary thinking, and reflective practice.

Design Across Technologies: Analyzing the relationship between creative intelligence and technological advancement, particularly in the age of AI, digital fabrication, and interactive systems.

Circularity and Sustainability: Addressing how creative intelligence informs regenerative design practices that prioritize environmental responsibility, circular economies, and systemic change.

Join us for IDR 2026 as we engage in a dynamic convergence of ideas, practices, and perspectives that reflect the movement of creativity across disciplines and contexts. Through critical dialogue, innovative presentations, and collaborative exchange, the conference will explore how design continues to adapt, transform, and shape pathways toward more inclusive, resilient, and future-oriented worlds.