Sorry about the attachment slip: I wasn't sure that long postings were allowed now seeing that this had been criticised in the past.
The following is 3pp. and 1362 words.

Glen and Julian ( a reply to both)
Ezio Manzini is one amongst others who call for "shelf innovation" - a method of research/design that allows for the "natural" time it takes to come up with "new, creative, original" stuff. What this normally means is simply the following: when pressed for time in industry because time is money, money will often rule creativity and it becomes very difficult indeed to create on demand, and I suspect quite impossible to be consistent, to lay the same size egg time after time without burnout. What often happens in the advertising industry is not so much the new and innovative all the time, but a lot of recycling of fashion and what others are doing, each feeding off the others, trends etc. Manzini and others are calling for a "double-time" system as it were of collaboration to reduce the risks inherent in rushing to market too soon (witness the computer software industry) on the one hand, and taking too ivory-towerish long to come up with anything at all worthwhile, on the other.

Shelf innovation refers to the collaboration between academy and industry (which is where research students come in and especially doctoral researchers), the one having the time (at least comparatively speaking), theory and willingness to explore new possibilities without the real pressures of the market, the other the capacity to produce and market, as well as the need to innovate and improve but without the hassle of an own research facility. Of course the pressing market need for competitive products will tend to restrain creativity and originality, although this is not always the case - it depends on the research facility and the scope that the researchers are given - which points to the energy that can be produced by the right team of researchers (doctoral research students as well, working in teams), the energy of group dynamics, conflicting opinions of a diverse sort that shakes complacency, etc. But this situation of market need and speed is hardly the fault or impossibility of the two essential talents, rather a fault of the global hungry market.

Yes, "talent" can be studied by people with talent (not necessarily the same talent), and research will enhance talent, as doctoral research will enhance the student's "talent"/capability/capacity for dealing with the subject. Talent in the marketplace too often remains tacit knowledge recycling without some form of research.

I am not sure if you meant to use the word "compromise" in just this way ("does that same study compromise the ability to create?"), but if so, the answer is no. Far from compromising creativity, the study of talent/creativity - which is just another expression for doing "real" research, by which I mean that (academic) research is about the researcher, ultimately, and not just the product - enhances the ability to create because it opens up so many more possibilities for making connections, so many more ways to "see" the existing in new ways through new eyes, if you will. I think that I know what you mean by using the word compromise, because some our students (both design and art) really feel compromised by the research proposal in the first place, and by the fact that they have to "explain themselves", make things explicit. This is seen as "giving something away", compromising themselves by having to commit themselves, I suspect, too early in the research process. They bring to the research process preconceptions of what the structure looks like, what it does - and that they find restrictive. They have a difficult time seeing and believing that this very structure enhances their chances of not committing themselves too soon, of changing their minds if needs be without losing too much of the basic groundwork that has gone before.

There can be no such thing as a "clean sheet of paper" - the proverbial blank page on which nothing has ever been written. Indeed it is already filled with our previous writings, and a head full of research results (not research methodology) will write a new sentence on this so-called blank page. Ted Hughes wrote a wonderful poem on creativity (at least so it seems to me) called The Thought-Fox. His "research methodology" was to use the blank page as a platform for creativity to perform on. How to write a good poem, how to design well, etc., cannot translate into rules or strict guidelines, but inculcates in us a "talent" for or awareness of creativity.
Research methodology simply allows you to,

Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints in the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Research methodology alone will not guarantee creativity. If you can believe this, creativity can be like Hughes' poet "waiting" for the poem to write itself, without interference.

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Besides the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move

The movement of your fingers on your own blank page can be equated with (this to Julian) theoretical knowledge in design that is sourced from contextually appropriate interdisciplinary areas of knowledge. These areas of knowledge are Hughes' trees, stumps and hollows in a midnight landscape through which his thought-fox travels (you may call this your creative side, your other-self), as the research design itself must travel through a landscape filled with as many non-obstructive chunks of knowledge as possible. The creative process goes about its own business,

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

The blank page designs itself without interference from our preconceptions and prejudices (difficult to get rid of), but with the help of our willingness to listen and look. Perhaps this silent listening and looking (research) is a search for the natural talents we had as children, and which, yes I agree, much of "education" teaches us to ignore or devalue.

Design research does not have "paradox" at its fundamental core, if only for the reason that most people would translate this word/concept as negative, and thus more of a Catch-22 than a solvable problem. A paradox is only impossible to deal with if we insist on clinging to our old position (what we "know") and refuse to be carried along to wherever this may lead. "The only trick is" that you yourself, in a sense, create the possibility of introducing a paradox, a dichotomous situation to shake things up. The way you do this depends on how carefully (wrong word really, should be more something like) depends on how, with talent and flair, you choose the trees, stumps and hollows of your design landscape. You cannot with 100% accuracy determine beforehand what constitutes "contextually appropriate interdisciplinary areas of knowledge;" some chunks of knowledge in your design landscape will be unnecessary, others will be misleading, others still will seem promising ("A fox's nose touches twig, leaf") but turn out to be nothing but diversion. The point is, with practice you get to know how to "scatter" your chunks just so as to "minimise the risk of failure".

To assess the risks of your designs: look the other way, look to what creates risk in the first place - people. Scatter chunks of people knowledge, as well, in your Civil and Building Engineering research design landscape and you minimise the chances of risk or failure. Design depends on context, and the primary context of all design endeavours will always be the people-context: design is socio-culturally driven, and you will place your subject-context within this context. All the possible interactions between the two (social and subject, and there are many poss. interactions) need to be, at least in an ideal situation, investigated before determining what should be appropriate chunks of knowledge to allow into your design consideration. Any exclusion raises the element of risk automatically, and the "wrong" exclusions will raise the risk exponentially.


Johann van der Merwe
Faculty of Art and Design, Port Elizabeth Technikon
P/Bag X6011 Port Elizabeth 6000
Phone +27 41 504 3682 Fax +27 41 504 3529


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