THE DESIGN LABORATORY: A PARADIGM FOR DESIGN EDUCATION?

This paper discusses design education using historical and contemporary examples. The four educational programs chosen adopted the metaphor of the laboratory to serve as a basis for their work. That they called themselves laboratories is the starting point for looking at the subject matter of their teaching. Attention is drawn to the different ways in which these educational programs included art, science and technology in their curricula. The focus of the experiments of these programs shifted from pseudo-laboratory conditions to real-world problems. The comparison shows that the experiments involved and reproduced certain conditions which enabled the emergence and discovery of artistic features. Cross-disciplinary research and/or cooperative design education increasingly included "design thinking" that was focused on intuition. The ancient Greek notion of "techne" influenced the understanding of designing; in other words, art and technology were not separated from each other. By analysing different educational concepts it becomes clear that the borders between designers and non-designers are dissolving and that design research is to a greater extent becoming influenced by Science-Technology- Society (STS) and informed by the social sciences.