After five years of development, the Tsinghua International Conference on Art and Design Education (ICADE) has remained closely attuned to the pulse of the times, gradually building a global communication platform for art and design education. It aims to continuously promote high-quality interdisciplinary, intercultural, and intergenerational development in art and design education.
From November 15 to 16, 2025, hosted by Tsinghua University and organized by the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, the Tsinghua-Milan Art & Design Institute, and the Tsinghua China-Italy Design Innovation Hub, the 2025 Tsinghua International Conference on Art and Design Education will be held in Milan, Italy.
Under the theme “Future Context: New Paradigms in Art and Design Education,” the conference will focus on the evolution and transformation of the language of art and design in the era of artificial intelligence, exploring how to reconstruct educational paradigms within this new context.
In the era of artificial intelligence based on large language models (LLMs), language is no longer merely a tool for human communication. Trillions of textual data constitute humanity’s collective “past context.” AI learns from this vast corpus and has emerged with unprecedented creativity. When art and design, as a mode of expression transcending words, deeply integrates with AI, what kind of future-facing linguistic environment will be constructed by embodied experience and data-driven rationality?
This year’s conference will bring together over one hundred deans, professors, scholars, and industry representatives from leading art and design institutions across China, Italy, the UK, the US, Austria, Belgium, Japan, Singapore, Australia, and other countries and regions, to collectively write the “new script” of the future world under the “future context.”
The opening day features keynote speeches and a presidents’ roundtable, convening leaders from world-renowned art and design schools, as well as founders of newly established and upcoming art and design institutes globally. By capturing the continuing process of educational innovation between the “classic inheritance” of the past and the “paradigm exploration” of the future, the conference aims to advance sustainable development in art and design education amidst change and continuity.
On the second day, keynote thematic forums and parallel workshops will unfold within diverse disciplinary and industrial contexts. Scholars and experts from fields including spatial environment, fashion design, industrial design, information design, intelligent manufacturing, contemporary art, crafts, and digital art will engage in richly layered, thought-provoking dialogues on topics such as “rhetorical translation,” “dual subjects,” “plural space,” and “sensorial verbs.”
The conference’s international main venue will be hosted at the Tsinghua-Milan Art & Design Institute (address: Via Durando 39, Milano), housed in an iconic building designed by the Italian master architect Alessandro Mendini. Located adjacent to the Bovisa campus of Politecnico di Milano, it sits in Milan’s most vibrant design innovation district.
The 2025 Tsinghua International Conference on Art and Design Education (ICADE 2025) aims to establish a deep dialogue platform across fields and cultures. Participants will exchange ideas on art and design education under the “future context,” moving from theoretical frameworks to practical exploration, jointly advancing paradigm shifts and innovative development of art and design education in the age of intelligence.
