When IDS was still taking its first steps and had no practice of international projects, in 2014-2017 an important international exchange project was organized at the initiative of Tatia Skhirtladze, associate professor of the Vienna University of Applied Arts. At the beginning of 2014 Austrian designer James Scone, professor of the said university, conducted a 3-day workshop for IDS students on recycling and reusing family-kept old chairs designed by the legendary Austrian twisted furniture maker Mikael Thonet. After that, in 2015 10 students and teachers of the International Design School visited Vienna University to relive the history of the Georgian production of bentwood chairs invented by Mikael Thonet and participate in a workshop. And in 2016, a joint project was held between these two schools of design, which was crowned by launching and successfully sailing in River Mtkvari in Tbilisi a kayak built using Thonet seat parts.
In 2017, GTU was visited by a delegation from the Politecnico di Milano with a series of lectures, followed by a return visit of 10 IDS students and teachers to Milan and a joint workshop on the topic of restoration of architectural heritage.
The pre-pandemic period of 2018, 2019, and 2020 was very rich in international projects conducted with Erasmus+ and other facilities: intensive student and teacher exchanges, workshops, seminars, conferences, and lectures took place between Polytechnic of Milan, IUAV of Venice, Gediminas University of Lithuania and the IDS, which were transformed into an online format during the IDS students and teachers to Germany in 2019 to celebrate in Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, and Munich the Bauhaus centenary.