Hello All
I have been lurking around this list for a while, (i have been here
before some years ago)
I finally got my PhD a year ago after ten years of research through
practice (doing it besides my teaching position).
I have always been interested in the mix of practice and reflection and
to my mind the most valuable and pressing issue is how to relate design
practice and design research not only in an institutional way but in the
individual. The claim is that certain types of (design) knowledge is
only acquired or developed through research by design. (Keith, is this a
fourth type? Developing new insights, methods and practices and from
that generalized theories through a systematic investigation involving
both research by design and reflection?)
This might be an old argument and earlier in this thread Chris Rust
referred to this type of research and gave some nice examples of very
successful research based practices and also the obvious statement that
if we can't effectively bridge the (artificial?) gap between design
practices and design research it is all a waste
Since none of us are very skilled in magic to summon unlimited amounts
of time, resources and talents, we have to accept the fact that we are
talking about a knowledge mix from both practice and theory and that
this mix can vary and needs to be negotiated inn each individual case.
Basically I am saying that if we can talk about a certain acceptable
level of knowledge for a PhD candidate this knowledge can be composed in
many different ways and in some cases it is not only acceptable but also
crucial for design research that the cocktail contains larger parts of
practice based knowledge, skills and experience on the cost of e.g. the
philosophy of science.
If we don't accept and encourage this we will scare away many designers
and the remaining will be sabotaged in pursuing a practice driven
research project.
I think this type of research and knowledge negotiation is crucial for
the development of design research as something seamlessly connected to
design practice and tutoring. Without it I doubt if we even can talk
about an autonomous discipline of design research. It is the only type
of research that can only be done by designers.
The problems of lack of good supervisors and many weak theses' we might
have to live with for a while. It is absolutely not cured by just
pouring "academic ingredients" into the cocktail on the cost of the
practice related challenges which to a large degree have to be
investigated and developed into a discipline specific research
tradition. This takes time and a bit of pragmatism.
In the end I want to say that we really need to be very careful when
judging theses' from the field of design when it comes to what kind of
perspective we apply in our evaluation. I would prefer a thesis that
demonstrates new ways of design research into some of the many
unexplored issues in design practice, even if its just small
achievements, over an academically super sound (conservative?) but
irrelevant one.
Best regards
Birger Sevaldson
Oslo School of Architecture and Design
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