To return to Mark's original post, there is another aspect that hasn't
seem to come up in the responses.
Very practically: If you want to set up a new design school, I guess
you would hire according to your strategic positioning of that school.
If it were to be based in academia (at least in Europe), you would be
forced to work towards academic excellence in the long term if you
wanted any hope of financial survival. That would imply having to
staff your new school with enough colleagues proficient in academic
research to start being productive and building a research environment
from day 1.
Moreover, those colleagues would have to be experienced enough with
design practice to be able to work with the outstanding practitioners
that you would also have to hire. This in order to (1) build a strong
integration between teaching and research off the bat, and (2) develop
forms of design research and practice-based research while you had the
opportunity to do so without entrenchment.
Best,
Jonas Löwgren
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