Designerly ways of knowing: design discipline versus design science
Design Issues, 17 (3):
49-55 (2001)Abstract
I would like to begin this paper with a brief review of some of the historical concerns that
have emerged with respect to a relationship between design and science. These concerns
emerged strongly at two important periods in the modern history of design: in the 1920s, with
a search for scientific design products, and in the 1960s, with a concern for scientific design
process. The 40-year cycle in these concerns appears to be coming around again, and we
might expect to see the re-emergence of design-science concerns in the 2000s.
A desire to ‘scientise’ design can be traced back to ideas in the 20th-Century modern
movement of design. For example, in the early 1920s, the De Stijl protagonist Theo van
Doesburg expressed his perception of a new spirit in art and design: ‘Our epoch is hostile to
every subjective speculation in art, science, technology, etc. The new spirit, which already
governs almost all modern life, is opposed to animal spontaneity, to nature's domination, to
artistic flummery. In order to construct a new object we need a method, that is to say, an
objective system.’1 A little later, the architect Le Corbusier wrote about the house as an
objectively-designed ‘machine for living’: ‘The use of the house consists of a regular
sequence of definite functions. The regular sequence of these functions is a traffic
phenomenon. To render that traffic exact, economical and rapid is the key effort of modern
architectural science.’2 In both comments, and throughout much of the Modern Movement,
we see a desire to produce works of art and design based on objectivity and rationality, that
is, on the values of science.
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