Design as a Form of Knowledge

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Designing produces new knowledge. And any design process is based on knowledge. Knowledge and design are inextricably linked, but this close link also leaves a lot of questions open: Is design practice a special form of knowledge practice? What is specific to the knowledge produced through design? What is the position and role of design research in this intersection of design and knowledge? Some of these questions were addressed at the design research conference Entwerfen. Wissen. Produzieren/Design. Knowledge. Production, which was held in Berlin on 23-24 October 2009.

By Mads Nygaard Folkmann

Design research and its relationship with its object, design, is the topic of debate. This is the case in Denmark as well as in the international arena, including Germany, where the German society for design theory and research, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Designtheorie und -forschung, used its annual conference to debate the relationship of design, knowledge and design research. 

In her introduction to the conference Research Professor Claudia Mareis pointed out that design is a form of knowledge, and that design research should strive to discuss and specify the relationship between design and knowledge. Photo: Sarah Schipper

Knowledge Through Design

The basic point of departure for the conference organisers was that there are design-specific ways of knowing, and that this is reflected in research. When practice-based design projects play a role in research the research will contain design-related qualities.
“With the concepts of Entwerfen, Wissen and Produzieren – design as drafting and planning, knowledge and production – we are seeking to indicate a field of tension that is created by design and design research,” said Claudia Mareis, research professor in design research theory and history at Bern University of the Arts in Switzerland in her introduction.

Knowledge can emerge in design both in an early phase through the design draft and in a later phase, when the design has been produced and launched in the marketplace.
“It is essential for design research to define and articulate the knowledge that is produced through design practice and the production of design,” Claudia Mareis explained.
“There has been a shift in paradigm with regard to knowledge production, and we are now also talking about practice-based knowledge production. It is therefore important that we use research to develop our understanding of the relationship between design and knowledge.”

Applying Knowledge and Design Research

Thus, modern knowledge production challenges both our design understanding and design research.
“It is characteristic that knowledge through design is knowledge that has an application context,” said Claudia Mareis.
”The concept ‘context of application’ covers in the widest sense the entire environment in which problems arise from the genesis of knowledge, methods developed, research results disseminated and application defined. This is an advantage, because the design-related knowledge is expanded and is able to prove its relevance to society. On the other hand, it also involves the danger of a commercialisation of the knowledge production.”

This may pose a paradox for the production of knowledge in design research. On the one hand, design research must contribute openly to the creation of new methods, the dissemination of findings and the specification of new design applications. On the other hand, it is problematic if design research is too restricted by requirements of serving a specific purpose.
“It is crucial to maintain an open and critical perspective for design research and to constantly inquire how the link between design and research affects design as a practice that consists in developing something new – what it is that the research perspective facilitates for design,” Claudia Mareis pointed out. 

Professor Wolfgang Schäffner said that there had been a design turn in several classic sciences, which aims not only to develop concepts and methods but also to convert them into concrete practice. Photo: Sarah Schipper

The Design Turn

Part of the conference focused exactly on this discussion of knowledge and the fundamental way in which design alters the articulation and understanding of knowledge.

Wolfgang Schäffner, a professor at Humboldt Universität, pointed out that design is currently positioned in between the sciences, the humanities and engineering. He saw a tendency in some disciplines to include design as a form of science that deals with the transformation of theoretical insights into concrete results.
“For example, we are seeing a design turn in the humanities,” he pointed out. “One of the questions that this raises is how we can go from analysis to practice. The humanities is one of the fields that have seen a turn towards an emphasis on concrete design work.”

In this development, Wolfgang Schäffner saw a historic opportunity for design. The design issue is introduced in other disciplines, which also provides new perspectives for the field of design. Entering into other disciplines helps design develop into an interdisciplinary subject and an interface for other fields.
“Design can be viewed as a science that transforms and implements knowledge from other sciences,” said Wolfgang Schäffner.

In his presentation Professor Peter Friedrich Stephan highlighted the art project Schwarzmarkt for its groundbreaking exploration of the boundary between knowledge and non-knowledge. On several occasions, the project has been transformed into an event, always with a number of experts in a field with whom the participants could have 30-minute conversations. In this oral and narrative form of knowledge sharing there is both a transfer and a loss of knowledge, since some details are lost. www.schwarzmarkt-archiv.de.  Design: Mobile Akademie by Hannah Hurtzig

Knowledge and Non-Knowledge

Another strength is that design also challenges our fundamental understanding of knowledge. Thus, Peter Friedrich Stephan, a professor at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, demonstrated how knowledge and non-knowledge are related with regard to design as the development of new features in a practice.

One of Professor Peter Friedrich Stephan’s key points was that design facilitates new knowledge – among other things because the prospective perspective of the design process always incorporates something new and previously unknown. Photo: Sarah Schipper

Design is, Peter Friedrich Stephan pointed out, prospective . In a prospective process, it is capable of producing new knowledge, which often happens in leaps or in a process that initially escapes description or analysis. Peter Friedrich Stephan pointed out that design can be understood both as physical objects that have a certain form and mass and as something that happens in the mind in a cognitive innovation.

In this context, Peter Friedrich Stephan offered a summary of the relationship between design and knowledge.
“The key is to define what we cannot know in order to inquire both what knowledge concepts are involved and what the relationship is between knowledge and non-knowledge,” he explained.
“One may also inquire how knowledge and non-knowing can be combined in the drafting and production of design. The point is to use the design process to arrive at new, experimental knowledge spaces. The cognitive design and its draft can be seen as a specific form of insight. In this sense, the design process can be viewed as something that facilitates new knowledge spaces,” said Peter Friedrich Stephan.