Dettaglio del documento
Designing designers: design schools as factories of knowledge : research through design education : International convention of university courses in design 2003 edition
International convention of university courses in design <2003 ; Milano>
Abstract
Design schools as factories of knowledge, places of design research carried out through training processes, was the general theme of discussion in the fourth th edition of Designing Designers 2003.
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This somewhat weighty theme aims at getting over the wall that has today solidified in many academic spheres: that of research, on one hand, which many institutions continue to prefigure exclusively in terms of laboratories manned by figures in sterilised white coats, and, on the other hand, that of training, the place for the transmission of knowledge.
The theme the discussion dealt with (not in abstract terms but through examples and case studies) in the Designing Designers conference is able to show how, through training, the universities of design may contribute constructively to research.
Although, in fact, on one hand, a training model centred around the project as a means of learning has today become established for future designers, at the same time it cannot be denied that working on a project means following through a research.
Students, in fact, especially post-graduate students, are required less and less to create products and increasingly often to produce ideas and new strategies capable of surpassing established typologies and Ideas. This kind of project work leads to the conceiving of no longer only artefacts but also visions, strategies and extended scenarios; to the planning of projects that are no longer only operative but also, and above all, generative, capable of establishing paths and backgrounds of innovation that open not one but a whole range of possible directions in design.