REFLECTIONS ON THE TEACHING OF DESIGN
Joan Vinyets (Elisava, Barcellona), Presentation for the meeting
Dedalo's faces. Second day on formal innovation |
Given the title of the report, "How do you learn to design?", a whole series of considerations and issues come to mind. On the one hand, the question seems to invite an easily digestible reply, the writing of a sort of "recipe" or model for learning how to be a designer. If I did this, I would, I think, just be confirming a tradition that has grown up over recent years where there is much more concern for the "practica" of production of objects than for the formulation of a "practice" which is capable of generating new ways of conceptualising design.
Paradoxically, even though design has become a key element in industrial development and in our society's agenda, this omnipresence has not been translated into a deep and rigorous critique of what design is. A fact that has often led to a relegation of design to the category of simple instrumental practice, taking the task of the designer to be giving products their shape. If designing is no more than projecting or giving shape to objects, learning to design means getting a thorough training, going beyond questions of aesthetics, which will permit the designer to think and act in relation to possible future worlds. And it is this more prospective sense that interests me much more when it comes to thinking about what I believe learning design means. At the same, as I see it, such thinking, also means looking at the current design courses offered by design education.
The third age of design
Over the last 30 years, the map of design education has been expanding quite considerably. So, it is not at all unwarranted to speak of provision of design education on a mass scale, resulting in a veritable map of different teaching methods structured according to different aspects such as knowledge, instruments, attitudes, values and methodologies. Basing ourselves on comparative analysis of different models, we could structure four approaches of design teaching:
(i) continuity of a creative tradition in the development of products utilising practical knowledge of the craft;
(ii) the link with the world of art as a creative instrument and source of ideas for projects;
(iii) the link with the world of art as an orientation towards professional practice dependent on and shaped by the new tools of information technology;
(iv) the research and development of a model for the discipline based on a rigorously scientific investigation of areas of knowledge associated with the different process involved, the latter ranging from the creation of the object or product to production and consumption in the widest sense of the term. All of which has to be understood as an opening up to new areas of knowledge, given the evident interrelationship and fragmentation generated around the product creation process.
An approach then that means identifying and understanding the different agents involved to answer the new demands made upon designers. This approach can be strong and risky on the market, but I think, it's very necessary and innovative. In the first place, it has to be made clear that we are not speaking of design as such, but rather of "designs" and that nowadays teaching design involves more than anything else understanding and the complexity of functions that design has attained in advance "post-industrial" society.
The same concept of "designs" is also reflected in professional practice, which has steadily become more diversified. This observation is also basic to affirm the necessity for diversification in design training, where industrial development and new business strategies emerged with globalisation have to be taken into consideration. As pointed out by Richard Buchanan ("Education and Professional Practice in Design", pp. 63-66, Design Issues, volume 14, No. 2, 1998), the director of one of the most important design schools in America, affiliated with the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University, we are presently immersed in what could be called the third design age, marked by the emergence of design as a discipline. A scientific discipline is characterised by a set of knowledge and a body of methods and processes around which research and study is developed in order to systematise the elements that make up the discipline itself. Design now more than ever is immersed in such a process and it is deciphering its own nature and understanding thow this effects the practice itself. However, this situation is not new. What is new is the fact that through contribution from different disciplines (economics, engineering, social sciences, information technology, environmental sciences and so on) the discipline may be advancing towards an understanding of exactly what design means.
What is needed then is to foster a process of research which will investigate the changing nature of design and will be able to anticipate the new conditions of design praxis. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that design has increasingly incorporated knowledge and learning from other disciplines, a situation that cannot be ignored when training designers. Consequently, it is necessary to go more deeply into the rigorously scientific approach, but also take into consideration the different stages involved in the enterprise (cultural, economic, technological, environmental, aesthetic and strategic aspects etc.). The future of designer training lies in researching and propounding teaching models that will bring about the creative and innovative meeting of design on the one hand with industrial and economic rationality on the other. This meeting will empower a holistic approach aimed at generating a particular "cultural balance" and consequently a project-orientated culture that will be able to set up a synergy between the logic of the industry and the economy by means of an "applied creativity", applied to the conditions the social context demands. Nowadays, to do design is somewhat more than adding a value. Design is not a demiurge exercise in individual creativity. Companies are obliged to devise products that go beyond those that marketing and market trends dictate. They are expected to build around themselves an authentic company culture and to develop a strong project capacity for innovation and for being able to propose new models that respond to consumers' increasing autonomy and diversification.
Designs vs. design
As already affirmed, in this new framework ,product creation points up the need to form new and different professional backgrounds. As a result, today, teaching design means taking onboard a body of knowledge and tools related to the design project, for example the development of the technical aspects, the evaluation of the economic implications, the knowledge of the strategic contribution, the monitoring of environmental impact, the construction of and the research into the scenarios of the future, the explanation of the use and improvement of usability levels, the simplification, the rationalisation of information, the interaction and customer relations and so forth. A range of changes and mutations that translate into such major professional orientations such as design management, information design, design planning and ecodesign.
All these aspects, among many others, also indicate the need to move the discipline into new fields of knowledge, which are often linked to true traditional scientific disciplines. Accordingly, we have to be able to move from a static concept of design to a much more interactive and dynamic one, to perceive the connections and the possible developments and to create a body of theory and methodology that will give support to project-orientated praxis.
The information age and the service-orientated society presuppose a series of interrelations between structural transformation and sociocultural processes. Economy, society and culture are three spheres in constant interaction, bringing about a redefinition of production relations in the context of globalisation, of new social movements and trends. The background to any given product is increasingly complex, since it has become what could be called a product-system. This is a concept that involves the need to understand a products as a complex integrated system, which necessarily implies the creation of cross-disciplinary project synergy. This in turn presupposes a substantial transformation in designer training since the different specific technical inputs - which take place in the production of a product - cannot be viewed as autonomous and self sufficient contributions that are added to the object one by one. The new logic of the product - system means denying the idea that the product is the result of successive stages. Its reality is made up of a number of attributes (technical, functional, formal, cultural, communicative, spatial, performance and service-orientated) by means of which the product in question and the company itself take on and identity a precise meaning for the consumer.
Given all that and the extent to which the product is a multidimensional project, we can conclude by underscoring the fact that designer training necessarily means awareness of new demands. It is precisely for this reason that we can no longer speak of the existence of a singular concept, "design", but rather of the coexistence of different "designs". Learning to design is therefore a certain responsible attitude towards a future that could take a thousand different forms. Above all else however, it is learning that the design project and the innovation that it requires do not need to be driven by technology and economics. It is in this new situation, therefore, that it becomes meaningful to talk about holistic design education.
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Florence
27th / 04 / 2000
Meeting organized by:
Centro Studi
G.K.Koenig
and Artex
for Regione Toscana
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Edited and translated by:
Letizia Salvadori |
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In cooperation with:
Elena Ganchi
Sonia Morini
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