François,
Thank you for the opportunity to clarify this point. In response to your question:
...is Culture (or some layers of it, like the designer's sub-culture) embedded or not in designed artifacts?
The point I am trying to make is that references (often in the form of artefacts or experiences) to/from cultural capital may embed in the artefact being designed OR they may contribute to the process in a very different way. For instance, in my research there are several specific examples where the student designers drew upon their cultural capital (e.g., prior experience with specific objects or in places) and used those as direct sources/inspirations for their current design (i.e., they mapped a structural detail of an artefact from their memory to the physical object they were designing). On the other hand, there were many more examples where there was a great distance between the reference and the artefact being created. This lead me to seperate and examine the concrete (like) references from the ones that were abstracted (very unlike) references from the design task at hand. I called these tangible references and intangible references. The tangible references are those that make sense to the project and have clearly been discussed specifically for or to serve the development of that artefact (e.g, discussing different foods when designing an airline meal tray). The intangibles are those references to culture that are clearly not used as a source for inspiration (functionally, structurally, materially, aesthetically, and so on). Through tracking all the references within context, I was able to determine that the intangible references (assuming that all references are meaningful in some way) were indeed driving the process in a less material way. That is, I speculate that the intangible references drive the process of creation by aiding in communication, aiding to motivate (individuals and each other), to evaluate and criticise concepts at various stages of the process, and so on. Naturally, in the case of intangible references these do not become embedded 'materially' in an artefact; however, one could argue that these are embedded in an 'immaterial' sense because they do contribute to the overall development of the artefact.
Megan
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