Hi João,
Thanks for initiating this thread.
I cite Sennet all the time in my work. I undertake practice-based Research through Design. My method typically involves entangling textile crafts, design interactions and materiality to shape an embodied enquiry of my research focus. My background includes working in Fashion and Textiles departments, where Sennet is considered a foundational reference. Yet I publish in design-oriented HCI and interaction design contexts, as well as contexts that engage directly with crafting research.
I provide some excerpts (and refs) to extend your discussion and underline what I see as the relevance of Sennet and other craft theorists, as well as craft practices, to design theory. I hope this might open space for others to share their relational engagement with craft theories and practices, whether or not they engage directly with textile or other crafts.
in: Wilde, D., Underwood, J. Pohlner, R. PKI: Crafting Critical Design. DIS2014, The ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems. Vancouver, Canada, June 21-25, 2014
McCullough [22] speaks of the importance of craft as “the condition in which the inherent qualities and economies of the media are encouraged to shape both process and products”.
Rosner et al speak of how a craftsperson playing with their materials is led towards finding what it is they want to make [32]. Craft and working with one’s materials provides an openness of enquiry. Such a process permits using the materials and tools to think with. What emerges is a research process that is a “speculative and indeterminate progression (...) reminiscent of what Tim Ingold [17] terms wayfinding in comparison to navigation: feeling one’s way rather than using a map” [7]. This way of thinking creates a continual feedback mechanism within the research structure that is open, flexible and responsive. Just as craftspeople calibrate the motions of their work in direct response to the work just performed [2], researchers also need to be open to where the data, research, design enquiry, and participant reactions might lead them.
Belford suggests, craft’s sensory and emotive state is a way to open “the seemingly hard world of science to a wider audience, by using the ‘softer’ textile-making processes” (p80)[30].
Refs:
2. Adamson, G. The Craft Reader. Berg, Oxford, UK 2010
7. Bardzell, S., Rosner, D., Bardzell, J. Crafting Quality in Design: Integrity, Creativity, and Public Sensibility. In Proc. DIS 2012, 11-20, 2012
22. McCullough, M. Abstracting Craft, The Practiced Digital Hand. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA. 1996.
32. Rosner, D., Ikemiya, M., Kim, D., Koch, K. Designing with Traces. In Proc. CHI 2013, 1649-1658, 2013
17. Ingold, T. “Walking the plank: meditations on a process of skill.” In Defining technological literacy: towards an epistemological framework. New York, Palgrave Macmillan. 2006.
in: Wilde, D., Underwood, J. Pohlner, R. Crafting Material Innovation. In EKSIG 2015. Design Research Society Special Interest Group: Experiential Knowledge (2015):21-33.
Rosner et al. (2010), have investigated how the inherent creative process of crafting affords novel ideation, applications, and adoption of new technologies. They have found that craft can serve as “a resource for understanding the ways materials, techniques and relationships are continually re-bound in a digital age”; that the act of making can enrich collaborative processes (Rosner and Taylor 2011); and can be invaluable to an exploration of materiality (Rosner et al. 2010). Vaughan has used embroidery to explore the lived relationship between artefact, user and the experience of design (Vaughan, 2006). Fernaeus has used the textile craft of patchworking as a structural metaphor to assist children to code, and the model of the jacquard loom to identify patterns in the history of HCI (Fernaeus 2007 and 2012). Baggermann et al. have explored the social value of craftsmanship in service design (2013), and Kuusk, Koorishnia and Mikkonen (2015) demonstrate the value, and raise some of the challenges, of working at the intersection of craft and smart materials. Each of these examples demonstrates the importance of craft as “the condition in which the inherent qualities and economies of the media are encouraged to shape both process and products” (McCullough, 1996).
As Adamson (2013) contends, craft is not oppositional to technological advances. Rather they should be seen as sitting alongside one another.
We used textile crafts (…) [to] provide a point of entry to critical thinking, leaning on the familiarity and social adhesiveness that crafts provide (Adamson, 2007).
Using our crafts as point of departure and guide (…) expanded the way we thought about exploring the potential of the materials we were working with, thus evolving our material consciousness (Adamson, 2007; Sennett, 2008). As noted by Sennett (2008), such an approach affords imaginative leaps and guides “towards what we sense is an unknown reality latent with possibility”.
Crafts' capacity to materialise form and spark curiosity (Sennett, 2008) helped make our research accessible to a diverse public. The emotional dimension of craft and crafting afforded extreme critical experimentation. Craft draws and connects people to memory and is deeply linked to traditions (Gordon, 2011). As such, crafts and craft-based artefacts are inherently accessible.
Ravetz (2013) states the social and performative nature of craft proves a rich site for inviting and opening up exchanges of ideas.
We see our metaphorical language of weaving as a type of expressive instruction (Sennett, 2008) that could be of use for others grappling with the challenges of multifaceted research into emerging materials and practices.
Our embodied engagement with crafts is enabling us to prototype probes within an extremely fecund process, designed specifically to develop novel advanced material innovations. In line with Crotty (1998), the craft-based phenomenological perspective is enabling us to ‘break with inherited understandings’ and ‘awaken fresh experience of the phenomena we [are] dealing with’: varied ways of moving outside of a relatively constrained norm. Experience itself becomes our point of departure (Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2009: 76)
Refs:
Adamson, G. (2007). Thinking through Craft. Oxford, UK: Berg.
Adamson, G. (2013). Preface. In Valentine, L. (Ed.) Prototype. Design and Craft in the 21st Century. London: Bloomsbury.
Adamson, G. (2013) The Invention of Craft. London: Bloomsbury.
Alvesson, M., and Sköldberg, K. (2009), Reflexive Methodology: New Vistas for Qualitative Research, 2nd edn. Los Angeles: Sage
Baggerman, M., Kuusk, K., Arets, D., Raijmakers, B., Tomico, O. (2013) The social fabric: exploring the social value of craftsmanship for service design. In Proc. NorDes2013.
Crotty, M. (1998), The Foundation of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process, Los Angeles: Sage
Fernaeus, Y. (2007). Let’s Make a Digital Patchwork. PhD Diss. Stockholm University.
Fernaeus, Y., Jonsson, M., and Tholander, J. (2012). Revisiting the jacquard loom: threads of history and current patterns in HCI. In Proc CHI’12 ACM Press, pp.1593-1602
Gordon, B. (2011) Textiles, the Whole Story, Uses, Meanings, Significance. London, UK: Thames and Hudson.
Kuusk, K., Kooroshnia, M., Mikkonen, J. (2015) Crafting Butterfly Lace – Conductive, Multi-Color Sensor-Actuator Structure. In Proc. ISWC2015
McCullough, M. (1996). Abstracting Craft, The Practiced Digital Hand. Massachusetts, USA: MIT Press.
Ravetz, A., Kettle, A., and Felcey, H. (eds.) (2013). Collaboration through craft. London, UK: Bloomsbury.
Rosner, D., Beuchley, L., Blanchette, J. F., Dourish, P., and Mazmanian, M. (2010). From Materials to Materiality: Connecting Practice and Theory. In HCI’, in Proc. TEI 2010, pp.2787-2789
Rosner, D. K. and Taylor. A. S. (2011). Antiquarian Answers: Book Restoration as a Resource for Design. In Proc. CHI’11.
Sennett, R (2008). The Craftsman. USA: Yale University Press.
Vaughan, L. (2006). Embodying Design: The Lived Relationship between Artefact, User and the Lived Experience of Design. In Proc. PDC2006.
all the best,
Danielle
—
Danielle Wilde
Research Associate Professor, SDU Design
Embodied Design • Wearable Futures • Design Ecologies
+45 9350 7201
[log in to unmask]
www.daniellewilde.com
University of Southern Denmark
Universitetsparken 1
DK-6000 Kolding
www.sdu.dk
> On 28 Jan 2017, at 01:00, PHD-DESIGN automatic digest system <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2017 19:01:21 +0000
> From: João Ferreira <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
> Subject: Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman — is it irrelevant for design theory?
>
> Ladies and gentleman, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends,
>
> Previous note: Having been indirectly referred in Ken Friedman's original post in the Our New Age of Contempt thread, I felt obliged to make a modest — and fundamentally improvised — contribution to gear discussion on this list (as Mauricion Mejía remarked) back to “design research and PhD design education discussions”. I have said before that being a member of this list is an extraordinary privilege; the way some outstanding authors engage in frank and generous (to all of us reading) discussion is a joy.
>
> Anyway, on with the show.
>
> I have the impression that Richard Sennett’s "The Craftsman" (2008) is seldom cited in journal papers about design. I wonder why that is.
>
> I have read it a couple of times and found his concept of craftsmanship interesting in itself (as a way to describe all human endeavour) and quite insightful for design. At first reading, I gathered that Sennett's idea of craftsmanship interestingly parallels Donald Schön’s conception of design as reflective-practice. Similarly to Schön, Sennett also concentrated on the professions as a whole, and stated that all human activity involves a sort of craftsmanship that the author defines as “the desire to do a job well for its own sake” (p.9). But while the latter is often (and rightfully, I would add) cited the former is (it is my perception) thoroughly ignored.
>
> I find it interesting to note the similarities between Sennett’s description of practice where “every good craftsman conducts a dialogue between concrete practices and thinking; this dialogue evolves into sustaining habits, and these habits establish a rhythm between problem solving and problem finding.” (p.9) and how Schön (1983) defined designing:
>
> I shall consider designing as a conversation with the materials of a situation. A designer makes things. Sometimes he makes the final product; more often, he makes a representation—a plan, program, or image—of an artefact to be constructed by others. He works in particular situations, uses particular materials, and employs a distinctive medium and language. (p.99)
>
> I would also highlight Sennett's critical analysis of the problematic of the predominance of CAD in architecture studios as insightful for anyone interested in design (and drawing in particular).
>
> Therefore, I would at least expect to see Sennett's name pop up every once in a while, but perhaps his work is still recent?
>
> To the design teachers on this list: is The Craftsman referenced in your classes at all? Do you find his conception of craftsmanship a useful framework to understand design?
>
> Sennett, R. (2008). The craftsman. Yale University Press.
>
> Schön, D. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic books.
>
> 'best,
>
> João Ferreira
> PhD candidate TU Delft
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> João Ferreira
> 00351 967089437
> 0031 0619808750
>
> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|
