MADE by the Opera House, also known as the Multidisciplinary Australian Danish Exchange, is an Australian-Danish exchange program that is offered to Australian and Danish students of architecture, engineering and design (in the built environment). Between 2014-2023, each year five students from a NSW university and five students from a Danish tertiary institution participated in the program in Denmark and Australia respectively. This year, for the first time, a student from the field of Strategic Design was part of the program. Isac Lindberg reflects on the MADE experience as a collaboration across disciplines and on the role of strategic thinking to get to the heart of the problem to be solved.

In late August, I found myself presenting in the Utzon Room at the Sydney Opera House. As part of the Sydney Opera House MADE program, I had just completed a six-week interdisciplinary exchange where I collaborated with four other students from different Danish universities who specialised in architecture, engineering, and design. Despite the obstacles of working as a group of initially, complete strangers, this experience highlighted the significance of interdisciplinary collaboration and how our diverse skills and ideas played a vital role in shaping our proposal for the Opera House’s Central Passage.

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