Peter,

I think these days there is too much knowlege involved in the many areas
to be a Renaissance person. And let's face it people who were truly
Renaissance people like Leonardo have well above average abilities. I
believe that architects often do not design good chairs and product
designers usually do not design good buildings. Leonardo wouldn't be
designing a canvas helicopter that didn't fly today he would be
designing a space vehicle or something far more complex. A car has
15,000 pieces. The notion of the Renaissance designer is routed in art
and architecture. I believe that that model does not work in product
design today at least. The genius artist with a group of apprentices.
These days you need a team of above average people to develop something.
Often hundreds of people for a car. Those architects and designers like
Starck and Gehry who work like Renaissance people tend to concentrate on
architecture and furniture and products that are more about style than
function, beautiful objects, expensive and fashionable and featured in
moma exhibits but not always throughly well designed objects from a
user's point of view or fitting the bigger picture of business, society
and environment.

That is where design research come in.

To your list of Art, Science, Design and Engineering, I would add
culture and environment. These two were often ignored in the past. The
great architects of the Bauhaus proposed that we eradicate human gloabal
regional culture for a world of artful objects easily made by machines.
They talked about a future of mass production but not so much about
global warming or oil prices. In Detroit we are demolishing many
monuments to their ideals that are no longer used.

The issue of providing behaviour models to students who were motivated
by the desire for fame is that almost none of the average class will
ever be famous, better to try to make them good rather than famous.

______________________________

R   o   b     C   u   r   e   d   a   l   e
Professor, Chair Product Design
College for Creative Studies Detroit
201 East Kirby
Detroit MI 48202-4034

Phone: 313 664 7625
Fax:      313 664 7620
email: [log in to unmask]
http://www.ccscad.edu
______________________________
>>> "Peter J. Walters(ACES)" <[log in to unmask]>
09/30/04 4:41 AM >>>
Perhaps this is going to sound somewhat romantic (please bear with me)
but what
about all those wonderful renaissance people who were artists,
scientists,
inventors, designers rolled into one (Da Vinci, Christopher Wren, Brunel
etc
etc)

This division of disciplines and specialisation seems to be a
twentieth-century
phenomena

Here's a quote from Karl Popper that I think might be relevant here:

'The scientist and the artist, far from being engaged in opposed or
incompatible activities, are both trying to extend our understanding of
experience by the use of creative imagination ... both are using
irrational as
well as rational faculties ... Both are seekers after truth who make
indispensable use of intuition' (from Magee, 1973)

Peter

Peter Walters
PhD Student
Sheffield Hallam University
http://www.shu.ac.uk/schools/cs/cri/adrc/research2/peterwalters
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