Emerging Research Cultures in Design Education: the Pure and the Applied

Abstract

This paper will report on and evaluate the extent to which stereotypes of design research exist within UK design education. In a context where institutional policies promote practice-based research, a series of ten in-depth interviews were conducted with educators in a UK art and design faculty from October to December 2001. Subsequent analysis has shown that distinctive stereotypes of the artist versus the designer exist and have been perpetuated from long-held modernist assumptions about the relationship between art, design and society.This paper will inform debates about our understanding of creativity, inspiration, and intuitive responses for design. It will also show how designers interpret the difference between 'blue skies' and applied research. Artists have variously been portrayed as outsiders, or bohemians with a 'private' space for reflection, where intuition is paramount. In contrast to this the designer is seen as working in the 'real' world; collecting, observing and then re-using data and impressions. How far these models are still relevant to the 21st century will be questioned through this presentation as a means of understanding the nexus between teaching, learning research and professional practice within art and design education.