▲ TDRI and CID jointly launch preparatory work for IASDR 2025. From left: CID Vice President Hsu Yen and President Chen Chien-hsiung, Professor Chen Lin-lin (on screen), TDRI President Chang Chi-yi and VP Research and Development Liou Shyhnan.

Taiwan Design Research Institute (TDRI) and Chinese Institute of Design (CID) have joined forces to earn recognitions of international design research community, winning the right to host the 2025 annual conference of the world-renowned design research association International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR). This globally anticipated event is projected to take place at Taipei New Horizon in Songshan Cultural and Creative Park in December 2025, and is expected to attract design scholars, experts, and students from all across the world. The year 2025 also marks the 20th anniversary of IASDR, and the conference will respond to the discussions on “Design Topics” and “Design Tools and Methodologies” at the 2023 conference themed “Life-Changing Design,” and focus on the theme of “Design Next” to not only review the progress of design research over the past two decades, but also look ahead into the future, striving to formulate for future generations a new roadmap of design knowledge, theories, and methods. According to President Chang Chi-yi of TDRI, Taiwan is more than capable of hosting this conference with its rich experience of organizing numerous international events like the IDA Congress in the past. Fourteen experts from academia, including Professor Chen Chien-hsiung and Professor Hsu Yen of CID, will be joining the preparatory work of the event, and Professor Chen Lin-lin of Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands will also participate remotely. IASDR is is an international, non-governmental, non-profit-making, charitable organisation, and strives to promote research or study into or about the activity of design in all its many fields of application, through encouraging collaboration on an international level between independent societies of design research. Starting in 2005, IASDR has organized a biennial International Congress of Design Research, which has become a prominent academic event of global design research. Twenty years ago, Taiwan hosted the inaugural conference, and next year, the event makes a grand return to Taiwan after many years away. With the collective effort of TDRI and CID, IASDR 2025 will undoubtedly become an important milestone that drives global design research forward.