Folks,
What is the essential knowledge of our field? What may we expect any
Ph.D. student to have read and considered? Would we be embarrassed if
our students have not read certain works by the time they graduate?
--and what are those works? Is there a small set of works--books and
articles--that we regard as core reading for any student working toward
a Ph.D. in Design?
The idea of a canon has become problematic in some fields, but is our
field young enough and small enough that it needs some [SMALL] set of
readings to convey our history and thinking? Is there a common
reference set that we, as faculty, take for granted in our personal
growth in the field?
These may not be works that we admire or seek to emulate, but ignorance
of them would weaken our ability to discuss the development of design or
to locate our own work intelligently in the broader map of design
knowledge. Serious works, not idiosyncratic personal favorites (i.e.
please no de Bono or Dale Carnegie or Norman Vincent Peale!)
Example: The book we love to hate: Pevsner's "Pioneers of the Modern
Movement from William Morris to Walter Gropius."
Thoughts?
Richard
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