A strong interdisciplinary orientation can make a person more aware of the limits and potentials of their own discipline or profession. But an interdisciplinary approach that is based on the expanded concept of design has the unfortunate effect of watering down the designers’ core competence: design. Merete Ahnfeldt-Mollerup, associate professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, who carries this month’s Baton, believes that the expanded concept of design blurs the goals of design research and design education.

Merete Ahnfeldt-Mollerup is an associate professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture.

What is your view of the expanded concept of design? What does it mean to you?
The concept makes no sense to me whatsoever! The word design comes to us from English, but it doesn’t mean the same in Danish, and that’s a problem, as we keep switching between Danish and English today.

In English, it’s a wonderful word, rich in meaning, which describes what designers do, and what their abilities are. In other words, in English, design is more closely linked to a method. In Danish, in my opinion we need to use the words giving shape, as the Danish use of design is more closely associated with particular objects. The Danish concept of design is impenetrable and narrow. I think that the whole point of discussing the expanded concept of design is to bring the English meaning of the design concept into Danish.

In a communicative sense, the expanded concept of design works fairly well. It’s good communication to say that design is about more than stylish objects. But in a professional context, it causes confusion. We have always applied the broader sense in the School of Architecture, but lately I’ve begun to use the words giving shape instead, because the term design can be confusing. To me, there is nothing “expanded” about saying that design also includes the band Aqua, hernia bandages from Coloplast, or Google, which are all extremely design-based, even if the people behind these products don’t necessarily view themselves as designers.

The key thing is to become aware of the importance of form. For example, Rigshospitalet – Copenhagen University Hospital is currently hiring designers to create future hospital wards that take both interior styling and work procedures into consideration. A good end-result requires that some members of the team, which also includes doctors, nurses, anthropologists and engineers, are good at giving shape to things. The designer is the individual who brings everything together in terms of functional, visual, acoustic, tactile, and spatial qualities in relation to the surroundings. But there is no expansion in this; that’s the way we’ve always approached the task.

All the other disciplines and professions are involved in the dialogue and in the collaboration. But the people charged with creating a good, coherent form, that is, the designers, must be focused on giving shape to things. The expanded concept of design turns everyone into designers, while those who were supposed to be designers are so less and less, as the expanded concept of design means that they are expected to focus on a whole range of other disciplines as well.

What is the consequence of the expanded concept of design for the way in which we think and talk about design?
The concept causes confusion about the goals of design research as well as the goals of design education. Specifically, I’ve seen students spend a great deal of time on aspects that are irrelevant to their education. The Academy’s School of Architecture has a longstanding tradition for integrating something that resembles an anthropological method into the work, and I teach it myself. But it can get out of hand and sidetrack the students; they don’t pay enough attention to form in their projects, because they spend too much time on the preceding stages of registration and analysis.

In other contexts, it goes off track as inspiration from the visual arts makes people spend their time developing concepts: Young designers are trained in concept development but not in actual design work – the result is neither here nor there, and they can’t find work as designers.

A strong interdisciplinary orientation can make a person more aware of the limits and potentials of their own discipline or profession. But in this case, the interdisciplinary approach has the unfortunate effect of watering down the designers’ core competence. If designers don’t succeed, it’s often because their design competencies are not strong enough. And if the design profession is in trouble, this is why. Design, in the sense of giving shape, is already a nerdy and complex discipline in itself with all that it entails in terms of ergonomics, production techniques, knowledge of materials, knowledge of form, visualisation of alternative solutions, etc. Developing a grasp of that leaves no time to also acquire the methodology belonging to other disciplines.

What is the consequence of the expanded concept of design for the way in which we perceive and approach design research? What challenges does the expanded concept of design entail?
There’s nothing to keep a historian or an anthropologist from studying design, but they should be aware that the core is design, in the sense of giving shape to things. Design research has several specific tasks, including historical research, method development in relation to the educational programmes and practice as well as research in collaboration with companies. For example, the furniture manufacturers have a need for research and development efforts – an obvious task for design researchers. The consequence of the expanded concept is that the straightforward, concrete tasks that are in demand are pushed aside in favour of extremely abstract pursuits where the main emphasis is on conceptual clarification.

As the expanded concept of design blurs the design concept, it also blurs design research. I believe that some of my colleagues are putting their energy into inventing things that already exist. Little wonder that economists, engineers or programmers are baffled and insecure when they have to do design work, and globally, then, we’re seeing a great deal of theory that deals with very elementary issues, issues that are addressed in the first-year curriculum at the School of Architecture. And that leaves a giant leap to the actual professional development that may be too nerdy for outsiders.

I don’t understand why design of all professions must be dragged down to this elementary level. The design method that we already have can easily handle what’s implied in the expanded concept of design. We don’t need a new method; we need methodological development on the basis of the existing method.

Who would you like to pass the baton to?
I would like to pass it to Annette Meyer; she is an independent designer who works in the border zone of art, fashion and design.

Mind Design #7, 2008