Table Of Content

DESIGN RESEARCH Revised Kindle Edition Peter Downton © Peter Downton, 2013. Copyright of all photographs is held by the author. EJP | Elizabeth James Productions Melbourne, Australia Contents 0 Preface to the Kindle Edition 1 Introduction: some conceptual basics 1.1 On design research 1.2 Research 1.3 Design 1.4 The ‘scale of danger’ 1.5 Method and methodology 1.6 On the methods of this text 2 Research for design 2.1 Introduction 2.2 ‘Research for’ that enables an individual’s design in a general sense 2.3 Research for a specific project 2.4 Some classes of research for specific projects 2.5 Discussion of the research activities considered 2.6 Some final thoughts 3 Research about design 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Research into what design should be 3.3 Research into what designers do 3.4 Teaching and learning design 3.5 History of design and designed things 3.6 Some final thoughts 4 Ideas of knowledge 4.1 Introduction to chapters four to seven 4.2 What do we mean by the term ‘knowledge’? 4.3 Some ideas about knowledge 4.4 Accounts of science applied to design 4.5 Final thoughts 5 Knowledge production and transmission 5.1 Introduction 5.2 The production of knowledge 5.3 Theories 5.4 Models 5.5 Theories and models as epistemological tools 5.6 Objective knowledge with no knowing subject 5.7 Final comments 6 Knowing, designing and knowledge 6.1 Knowing designers 6.2 Design knowing and knowledge 6.3 The production of new design knowing and knowledge 6.4 Design knowledge made manifest 6.5 Knowing to knowledge – a summary 7 Design knowledge in the world 7.1 The spread of design knowing and knowledge 7.2 Exemplary design works: their use and collection 7.3 Transmission of knowledge via works of design 8 Evaluating research through design 8.1 Outline 8.2 Narrative and pattern 8.3 Reflections on reflective practices 8.4 But is it knowledge? 9 Bibliography 10 Notes O Preface to the Kindle Edition This book was written at the turn of the millennium and emerged from RMIT University Press in early 2003. It is a child of its particular time and place, but the currency of many of its ideas and views seems to have increased across the decade. I argue here that design in the fields of architecture, interior design, fashion, industrial design, landscape architecture, and communication design, is a way of inquiring, a way of producing knowing and knowledge. I hold that if this proposition is supportable, designing can be understood as a way of researching, since the production of knowledge is a central undertaking in researching in sciences. The text distinguishes various forms of research used in design, but concentrates on researching through the practices of designing activities themselves. My outlook, and often my examples, throughout is unavoidably architectural, since that is my original area, even if I have explored and operated rather divergently. Architects and designers of all kinds, and others in art, performance, craft, and film have told me they have found some, or all, of this book useful to their thinking. Some of these informants have been accessing it via libraries, friends, or copies. In an effort to reach out more widely – as the paper version has been rather invisible for some years – I have prepared this edition. The present text has minor revisions, most notably a simplification of the final chapter, as a more current account is available elsewhere (detailed at note 159); there are also a few corrections. Some newer thoughts and views have emerged in more recent papers and book chapters of mine;[1] even fresher thoughts and arguments may yet appear in another book. A very small outline of one set of such fresher ideas has been added as section 7.3.4. My book Studies in Design Research: Ten Epistemological Pavilions, RMIT University Press, Melbourne, 2004 is, essentially, the second half of a whole – much of that book contains visual and written accounts of models made in evolving the position put in the original version of this book. Studies is, however, long out of print and unlikely to reappear. The original version of this book was initiated by Brent Allpress, John Bowden and particularly Catherine Murphy, who variously goaded me into making a start on it. All the postgraduate students who participated in my seminar ‘Design Research Methods’ from 1988 to 2002 contributed to the evolution and testing of the ideas expounded here. Harriet Edquist encouraged and supported my writing. Ordered by the years of their contribution, Alex Selenitsch, Greg Missingham, Michael Trudgeon, Doug Evans, Leon van Schaik, Shane Murray, Suzie Attiwill, Mick Douglas, Andrea Mina, Michael Ostwald, Barry Hudson, Pia Ednie-Brown and Ranulph Glanville each contributed to this project by giving me difficulty, ideas, numerous valuable conversations, and often references. I thank them for shaping my thinking. Marion Pitt, as always, loved, questioned and patiently listened. Brenda Marshall edited the original manuscript. 1 Introduction: some conceptual basics 1.1 On design research Design is a way of inquiring, a way of producing knowing and knowledge; this means it is a way of researching. That is the central proposition of this book. It is simple to assert that designing is a way of researching, or that we research when we design. It is nothing like as simple to engage with this idea and all the concepts furled within it and attempt to establish a coherent rationale for what is otherwise no more than a claim. This is the endeavour of this text. The positions put about research and design in the School of Architecture + Design at RMIT and other places are the impetus for this investigation. My task is to mount an argument of substance for the proposition of the opening paragraph. For me this argument can be made via epistemological means; other arguments can be advanced, but the centrality of knowledge and knowing to the argument seems compelling. There are far more people against the idea that designing is a way of researching than are for it. Coherent arguments against it are not frequently found. I imagine this is because it is not seen as requiring refutation since it is seen as inherently incorrect. In a chapter titled ‘Design in Relation to Research’, Groat and Wang[2] evaluate the idea and attempt to convince the reader that design is quite different from research. Langrish puts forward a case for a research- based doctorate being quite different from one in art and design.[3] They each give balanced accounts of traditional views. The views put here have had a lengthy gestation as I have taught material related to this area since 1973 to both undergraduate and postgraduate students in formal lecture-based mode, in studios and in seminars. Starting in the late 1980s, I began a postgraduate design seminar at RMIT, which spanned three faculties and then developed into Design Research Methods in the early 1990s. Over such a range of subjects spanning more than quarter of a century, many people have helped shape ideas through their involvement – students (especially postgraduates), colleagues and guests. The seminar sessions have been discursive and sometimes wayward in their exploration of issues. The many people who have participated have contributed in countless ways to the ideas, their testing and refinement. They have mostly come from