Reflections on design education

DS 62: Proceedings of E&PDE 2010, the 12th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education - When Design Education and Design Research meet ..., Trondheim, Norway, 02.-03.09.2010

Year: 2010
Editor: Boks W; Ion, W; McMahon, C and Parkinson B
Author: Crisp, Alan Roy
Section: REFLECTIONS AND STANDS
Page(s): 24-29

Abstract

The author reflecting on the conference theme, ‘when design education and design research meet’ began contemplating on thirty-one years of teaching design in Higher Education [HE], fifteen years of contributing to conference from ‘SEED 1995’ [1] to the present and witnessing and taking part in, often as the driver, a complete change in the manner of teaching design. During the late 1970’s
technological design was often taught as a component part of other subjects, intrinsic within the engineering disciplines, as such it melded with disciplines which had their roots in physics, chemistry and mathematics. However, design within the Art Colleges was seen and taught as a secular subject applied to the eclectic creative disciplines; as such it was the driver for Furniture Design, Theatre Design, and Ceramic Design etc. Design manifested itself in the 1990’s within the technological arena as design engineering, industrial design, product design and in schools design technology, pushing the perceived ‘major’ disciplines of engineering e.g., thermo-fluid dynamics into the background, aided by a political landscape keen to adopt the creative industries as the wealth producing sector of the United Kingdom, as Julier states ‘Few professions in the industrialised world have grown in terms of economic presence and cultural import as much as design has in the last two decades’ [2].

Keywords: Reflection, design philosophy, knowledge economy

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