Knowledge Circle
The Design Academy Eindhoven Knowledge Circle was created as a tool to both stimulate and map the research being carried out by students through their individual projects. It was also a tool for highlighting and displaying specific graduation projects with a significant and well-developed research component. The Knowledge Circle is currently on hold. Please keep an eye on this page for future updates.
As part of this project, the Knowledge Circle team created the Lexicon of Design Research to create a shared language across the Academy that is both textual and visual. This Lexicon is ever-developing and is expanded on and changed continuously, with the input of colleagues, partners and students. To find out more, visit lexiconofdesignresearch.com or read more about the project on the DAE website.
The Knowledge Circle team was also instrumental in creating the Design Research Podcast series, which ran alongside the Graduation Show in 2019. Over eight episodes, the podcast featured a variety of graduates discussing the often invisible research process that forms the base of their projects. These can be accessed via the Academy’s account on SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/design-academy-eindhoven
DEFINITIONS OF DESIGN RESEARCH
One of the tasks of the Knowledge Circle was to begin creating definitions of Design Research at DAE.
This formed a central manifest for the project:
→ Knowledge is an integral part of design. Gathering knowledge – of materials, processes, people, history, aesthetics, and more – contributes to a thriving design culture. We call this research for design.
→ Design research is a different type of research within the field of design. Design research at DAE is research through design.
→ At DAE, design research takes place within all the departments, both Bachelors’ and Masters’, as well as the Readerships.
→ The various departments and Readerships at DAE develop design research as a collaborative practice, working together with industry, knowledge institutes and societal partners.
→ The practice of design research at DAE is embedded in a variety of practices, within the contexts of both arts and crafts and the academic, as well as in wider social, economic, cultural, technological and ecological contexts.
→ Design research at DAE can be valuable within all practices and contexts, not least by posing questions and repositioning and reframing design itself.
In addition, the team created further iterations of the definition of design research in this specific context:
DESIGN RESEARCH =
ANCHORING IN KNOWLEDGE
→ Design research at DAE is a practice of thinking through making.
→ At DAE, thinking includes collecting, documenting, mapping, analysing, reflecting, translating and concluding. Thinking also allows for the synthesising of data into visualisations, and the sharing of insights across boundaries. Furthermore, thinking helps create new opportunities for design, make space for alternative perspectives, and the opportunity to create new meanings and dialogues, and explore new futures.
DESIGN RESEARCH =
ANCHORING + CAPTURING KNOWLEDGE
→ At DAE, making includes crafting objects, organising activities, telling stories, and designing systems and experiences. All of these can be vessels to express knowledge through more than just words alone. Design Research = Anchoring + Capturing + Creating Knowledge
→ DAE takes a multimedia approach to design research and its dissemination. Manifestations of design research at DAE include objects, services, events, spaces, drawings, films, texts, maps, styles, identities, scenarios and more.
→ The results of design research at DAE are disseminated through different media and platforms such as publications, interactions and conferences. These media and platforms are not just vehicles for sharing research results, they are an integral part of design research. Making an exhibition or staging a debate also produces knowledge.
DESIGN RESEARCH =
ANCHORING + CAPTURING + CREATING + DISSEMINATING KNOWLEDGE
→ DAE considers thinking through making a practice in which the material and the discursive are interrelated, and alternate in rapid iterations.
→ Thinking through making, research through design at DAE creates knowledge.
→ DAE creates knowledge.
TEAM
The Knowledge Circle team was made up of key staff members from the Research department, including members of the various Readerships: David Hamers, reader, Readership Places and Traces Paolo Patelli, associate reader, Readership Places and Traces Nienke Vording, general coordinator Design Research Irene Droogleever-Fortuyn, head of the former BA studio Leisure Liesbeth Fit, lecturer Writing and Narrative, BA programme Agata Jaworska, lecturer Curatorial Projects, MA Critical Inquiry Lab