This includes the way Asian cultures are encoded and expressed through a range of art and design fields, as well as the translation of international art and design knowledge into practice in Asia. It involves the study of cosmology and human relationships to nature and to traditional and contemporary technologies. This includes not only the social, built, and natural environments, but aesthics, art and design concerns and how they impact life and living conditions, with ethnographic documentary playing a central role.

They are closely connected to the folk and fine art traditions of the region, and therefore a component of the center’s activities involve fine artists as well as master craftspeople of the past and present. International design today must respond to a widening array of cultures and around the world, and therefore, it is moving away from the concept of European modernism as universal. Not only is there a large Asian diaspora, including many Asian artists and designers who have been educated around the world and have through this process brought their cultures into dialogue with international art and design schools, but the largest demographic in the world today is Asian. It may be that the future of international design will be an international form of Asian Design.