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Design as Research
Board of
International
Research in
Design, BIRD
Members: Advisory Board:

Michelle Christensen Lena Berglin
Michael Erlhoff Cees de Bont
Wolfgang Jonas Elena Caratti
Gesche Joost Michal Eitan
Claudia Mareis Bill Gaver
Ralf Michel Orit Halpern
Marc Pfaff Denisa Kera
Keith Russell
Doreen Toutikian
Michael Wolf
John Wood
Gesche Joost
Katharina Bredies
Michelle Christensen
Florian Conradi
Andreas Unteidig (Eds.)
Design as
Research
Positions, Arguments, Perspectives
Birkhäuser
Basel
CONTENTS
Foreword BIRD 007
Gesche Joost
Design / Research
Introduction 012
Katharina Bredies
Where Are We Going? An Aspirational Map 017

Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders
The Resourceful Social Expert:

Defining the Future Craft of Design R esearch 022
Mike Press
The Myth of the Design Androgyne 028

Alain Findeli
Doing Research: Design Research in the

Context of the ‘Practice Turn’ 035
Claudia Mareis
Project-Grounded Responses:
Design / Research 042
Text / Object
Introduction 060
Andreas Unteidig
Communication in Design Research 064

Brigitte Wolf
Text vs. Artefact in Design Research?

A Strange Question! 070
Wolfgang Jonas
Nothing Fixed: An Essay on Fluidity in

Design Research 077
Uta Brandes
Everyday Homeopathy in Practice-C hanging

Design Research 083
Cameron Tonkinwise
Text / Object 091
004 DESIGN AS RESEARCH

Visual Stances 107
Borrowing / Stealing
Introduction 128
Florian Conradi
Design Research – No Boundaries 131

Rachel Cooper
Theories and Methods in Design Research –

Why We Should Discuss C oncrete Projects 137
Arne Scheuermann
In Praise of Theft: ‘The Play with Borrowing vs.

Stealing from other Fields’ … Or, the Problem
of Design Research 143
Clive Dilnot
Design Prepositions 153

Ranulph Glanville
Borrowing / Stealing 166
Discipline / Indiscipline
Introduction 182
Michelle Christensen
Transdisciplinary Research through D esign –

Shifting Paradigms as an O pportunity 186
Matthias Held
Indiscipline 193
William Gaver
Design, an Undisciplinable Profession 197

Klaus Krippendorff
Between Possibility and Discipline or: Design

Research as Provocation to the Faint-Hearted 207
Michael Erlhoff
Discipline / Indiscipline 212
Authors 227
Responders 235
CONTENTS 005
FOREWORD BIRD
Gesche Joost
Design research is a ‘Wolpertinger’ in the academic world (See Figure on page 108). It
mingles with other disciplines and remixes their methods; it integrates design practice
deeply into scientific endeavours and breaks any rule of proper and purified science; it
produces alongside new products and services, prototypes that go far beyond paperwork,
and messes around with any kind of defined process. Proposing ‘Design as Research’,
as the title of this book suggests, seems to be a huge provocation to any gatekeepers of
proper research practices in the scientific world. But we all know there is no black and
white – many disciplines today are broadening their scope to involve experimental or in-
terdisciplinary approaches. Many are interested in engaging with new approaches that
are much more linked to societal challenges and people’s everyday life experiences. De-
sign has always been an interface to the world that we are experiencing, and therefore it
is a good candidate to act as a catalyst for novel and disparate approaches. Social de-
sign collaborates with social sciences creating new methods and advancing approaches,
like living labs and participatory design tools; interaction design hooks up with engineer-
ing and creates tangible computing and wearables; critical design links to artistic prac-
tices in order to create utopian and dystopian perspectives on the world in which we live
in – to name just a few. Design research is in motion and gives rise to a variety of new
practices – which is why it is so fascinating to take a snapshot of the current state of
affairs.
The aim of this book is to reflect on the current state of discourses and features
some of the main questions on design research practices as well as on its relationship
to other disciplines. Fuelled by the parallel rise of artistic research all over the world,
many academics as well as practitioners are becoming curious about these new ap-
proaches’ potential. They promise to cross-disciplinary boundaries, established scien-
tific heuristics and academic practices that might lead to something different. The ex-
pectations are diverse: Can design research redefine the role of scientific practice in
between the established boundaries? Can it create a fresh look on methodological ap-
proaches? And can the research practice through design unfold views on possible futures
for our society?
As an emerging discipline – or trans-discipline, as some may say – design research
is still on the way to answering these questions. For some years now we have observed
a tremendous rise of design research practices all over the world with many international
institutions putting much more effort into PhD programmes, research activities, as well
as in to teaching theories and methods. Therefore, we are witnessing a growing interest
in exchanging best practice examples, and in finding collaborators for this emerging field.
Against a backdrop of these developments, we held a symposium on the central issues
FOREWORD BIRD 007

in design research at the Berlin University of the Arts in 2013, in cooperation with the
German Society for Design Theory and Research (DGTF). We invited international experts
from the field to map the various positions on the current state, as well as the possible
futures of the field. What visions and aspirations are guiding the expansion of design re-
search? Where did we want to go – and are we there yet? This symposium laid the foun-
dation for this publication, which reflects on the debates that arose during these two
days. For instance, when we asked what design research completely lacks, many of the
participants said: Self-confidence! The community started the discourse and claimed a
new territory; it gained attention; some even said that the community has accomplished
an international infrastructure with strong institutions in many countries and a large
body of published research. But on the other hand some think that the community com-
pletely lacks a capacity to engage forcefully in debate with other disciplines; it lacks con-
sensus on what constitutes acceptable research methods and valid research results; it
lacks public and academic visibility. Nevertheless, the future potential of design research
is impressive: Some experts have stated that within ten years design research will grow
into a true tertiary scientific branch, complimentary to the natural and social sciences;
it will be a major factor for academia as well as for company concepts, and it will be main-
stream! (You might doubt that becoming mainstream should be one of the most impor-
tant aims for a young discipline, and I agree – but this outlook shows that establishing
practices will be a major advantage for design research in order to have an impact on an
academic as well as a societal agenda.)
From the current dialogue we see that design research has the potential to inno-
vate research and to address global challenges by bridging gaps between theory and
practice as well as between disciplines. In this book we want to discuss and qualify ques-
tions concerning the specific qualities of practice-based design research, how it deals
with its different media, and its application in practice. Divided in to four main parts this
book tackles the following questions: What sorts of relationships exist between design
(practice) and research (practice), and what are the borderlines, if there even are any?
What sorts of text-object relationships emerge out of design research, and in what con-
stellations can these alliances be considered useful, appropriate or possible for commu-
nicating our results? What significant theoretical and conceptual influences from other
fields become translated through design research, and where does the translation stop
and the difference begin? And finally, what could be considered the distinctive features
of design research, and to what extent should these potentially distinctive commonali-
ties be formalised at a disciplinary level? To tackle these questions, we asked interna-
tional experts to take a personal stance on these questions and arranged their responses
in the format of a debate – displaying the arguments for diverging positions and perspec-
tives. Furthermore, we asked the authors to draw a sketch of their position – be it a the-
oretical concept, a comment or a metaphor for design research. The only republished
material included in this compilation, Ranulph Glanville’s essay ‘Prepositions’ and his
hand-drawing, were kindly made available to us, since he sadly passed away before he
managed to write his stance for this publication. This book without a stance from Ranulph
008 DESIGN AS RESEARCH

though, would hardly be complete, and so we are very thankful that he still manages to
inspire us with one of his infamous intellectual provocations! Finally, we also invited
researchers who have completed a practice-based PhD in design to add their pro-
ject-grounded reflections to the debate in the form of short accounts. Our aim, overall, is
to give some guidance within the debate on design research and to map out positions on
basic emerging questions. As a new member within the community you might want to lo-
cate yourself and your research endeavour within one or another position on this map.
As a well-established ‘Alter Hase’ you might want to know your ‘Mitstreiter’ for any aca-
demic fights you will encounter tomorrow.
FOREWORD BIRD 009

Design /
Research
INTRODUCTION
Katharina Bredies
Over the last few decades, design research has established itself as a distinct aca-
demic field, with its own journals, PhD programs and theories. During this time, the
relationship between design practice and knowledge creation in design research
has changed significantly: From an activity that researchers observe from a distance
to an epistemic practice in its own right. This shift from design practice from being
the object of research to becoming a research method has been accompanied by
much debate about the framing of practice and production as part of an academic
knowledge creation process.
The tension between academic and professional knowledge cultures is nei-
ther particular to design nor is it particularly new. Other fields such as pedagogy,
medicine or management stress the importance of practical modes of learning, and
themselves have been struggling to argue for alternative modes of knowledge trans-
fer between academia and professional work. Similarly, design researchers have
been testing different constellations between one and the other: Doing research on
design practice to understand the process, producing useful insights and data for
design practice to improve the results, and finally using the design practice itself to
generate academic knowledge. Especially for the last – and most recent – mode, the
notion of ‘research through design’1 then helps to communicate the nature of this
relationship towards other academics.
The conflict surrounding rigour and relevance that has been accompanying
the debate on professional and academic knowledge creation in general is also par-
ticularly present in design research. Rigour concerns the way in which design prac-
tice becomes an accepted and qualified part of academic practice. Relevance be-
comes important when design researchers decide on the subject matter of their
work. Although ideally, both aspects should be addressed by practice-based design
research,2 the question for design researchers and practitioners remains: When
does design practice become research practice?
It would belittle the academic knowledge construction process that makes
scholarly knowledge trustworthy if we were to indiscriminately declare all profes-
sional practice to be research – in any field. Even if design researchers cannot and
do not want to draw clear boundaries, the existing academic system still applies its
long-established selection routines to distinguish reliable from unreliable knowl-
edge. The contributions in this section of our book shed some light on the circum-
stances and conditions that bring academic and professional knowledge creation
modes closer to each other. In this aspect, designers have struggled with the fact
that the process and results of their professional practice do not easily translate into
012 DESIGN / R ESEARCH

text-based research findings. And even if they do, practitioners might just ignore
even the most relevant insights due to the unattractive formats in which they are
presented.
When it comes to relevance, design research has been criticised for its lack of
implications for design practitioners. It almost seems as if the more scientifically
rigorous the design research grew, the less relevant it became in supporting design
decisions. This is a harsh accusation for an academic field that defines itself so
dominantly through its focus on the practice of making.
However, what might look like the usual gap between academic and profes-
sional practice could also be read as a symptom of an insufficiently defined inter-
face between the two. Design research practitioners still regard their research area
as an emergent field, with the desire to distinguish themselves from neighbouring
domains in terms of content, methodology and epistemological stance. While other
disciplines serve as positive role models for a well-functioning knowledge transfer
from academia to professional practice and back, none of these approaches seem
to represent the relationship of academic and professional practice that design re-
searchers are looking for.
A prospective PhD student in design research therefore has to wonder: What
are the useful, appropriate and valid models that I can apply in a practice-based re-
search project? It is this question to which the four authors in the first part of this
book offer some answers. They discuss how and to what extent design practice can
and should be part of design research practice, looking deeper into how academic
design practice and professional design practice differ, and share their visions of a
well-working relationship between the two.
From the tenor of their contributions, it seems as if the strict separation be-
tween academic and professional practice has become more of a rhetorical than an
actual problem for design researchers. The inherent optimism expressed by our con-
tributors is that the gap between academic and professional practices is not quite
as wide as it appears to be in the discourse. Indeed, we might get the impression
that the current discussion does not mirror all the significant changes that the the-
ory as well as the reality of academic research has undergone since the 1980s, which
has benefited design researchers rather than excluded them. The bottom line is that
good practice increasingly relies on profound research, and that good research al-
ways involves particular practices that are not so different from designing.
The two first authors, Liz Sanders and Mike Press, approach the relationship
of design and research practice from a professional point of view. Both report on
how today research has become a natural and crucial part of design practice, and
elaborate on desirable and promising models of research in a professional and
business context in the future. Alain Findeli and Claudia Mareis, the other two con-
tributors to this part, take an analytical stance to examine the relationship from a
more academic perspective, reflecting on the theoretical and epistemological foun-
dations behind practice as part of research.
INTRODUCTION 013
Liz Sanders introduces herself as a researcher trained in anthropology and
e xperienced in design consultancy. From this perspective between the traditional
academic and professional realms, she describes the current use of design and re-
search methods in professional design practice, but only to set the playing field for
aspirations of where the field might hopefully go. Her method of discussing the
topic is by creating maps that visually lay out the relationship. Her most recent map
is an attempt to lay out the landscape of design and research methods. It takes the
speculative aspect of designing into account: the further into the future a project
should think ahead, the more design and research tend to blend. In Sanders’ sce-
nario, design and research are not the most meaningful distinctions. Instead, the
intentions behind the engagement with prospective users become much more im-
portant. A well-known contributor in the area of participatory methods, she locates
the approaches of design for or with prospective users on a spectrum ranging from
provoking to serving people.
In a similar manner, Mike Press argues that debating the question of design
versus research practice has lost its relevance, given the diverse forms of collabora-
tion that already exist today. Therefore he is concerned about the different relevant
knowledge sources in design research projects, such as researchers, professionals,
prospective users or politicians, and with how to deal with them comfortably. With-
out clear boundaries between academia, business and social engagement, diverse
actors from all of these domains are drawn together by a common concern rather
than separated by their original professional domains. This calls for design skills
such as the ability to moderate and constructively work with the constraints of a
given situation. Press therefore brings on the image of the design researcher as the
social expert, following Richard Sennett’s concept of ‘sociable knowledge’, the abil-
ity to efficiently communicate and share professional knowledge and experience.
While presenting arguments for a similar entanglement of design and research
practice, Alain Findeli approaches this relationship from an epistemological point
of view. As a dyed-in-the-wool philosophical pragmatist, he takes the inseparability
of both practices as an a priori assumption. In his project-grounded research model,
practical experience is key to generating any new knowledge. Consequently, design
research does not make sense without a design project. The challenge is then to
identify the more fundamental issue behind the design activity, which can be reinter-
preted and reused in other design situations. According to Findeli, design research
can be better characterised through its attitude than through its subject matter,
which is too broad to deal with from a single disciplinary viewpoint. Hence, design
research is by definition a transdisciplinary field. Findeli sees the past development
in establishing design research as an academic field as reasonably advanced enough
to provide a productive working environment. In terms of academic contribution,
there is however plenty of work ahead of us when it comes to questions of aesthetic
theory, creativity theory, design epistemology, design thinking, the design process
or the phenomenology of use.

Claudia Mareis’s review of practice theory and the role of design research in
this discourse similarly builds on the general assumption that practice makes up
all research activities, not merely those of design researchers. She recapitulates the
seminal authors that initiated the ‘practice turn’ in the constructivist science and
technology studies in the 1980s. A lot of these authors have been readily received in
the design research community as well, especially with regard to the concepts of
tacit knowledge and material agency. Mareis draws our attention to Knorr Cetina’s
concept of knowledge cultures and practice not as a monolithic but highly situated
and variable thing. Based on this concept, she analyses design research in terms of
a particular knowledge culture in academia. Mareis’s judgment of the theoretical
framing for the design and research practice relationship is then critical. She con-
cludes that the struggle of design research to become an independent academic
field led to an exaggerated focus on practice as a distinctive feature. From the early
post-war design methods movement to the most recent and increasingly popular
model of ‘research through design’, she states that they describe a far less sophisti-
cated relationship between theory and practice than the practice theories in con-
structivist science and technology research offer.
The statements by the researchers who carried out a practice-based PhD show
the discrepancies between the claims of these four authors and their specific expe-
riences from the PhD projects. In the stances, we get the impression that research
and practice blend more and more. In contrast, the researchers’ comments illus-
trate the struggles in making this relationship work in reality. Since we were asking
for differences between design and design research practice, differences is what we
got: The freedom from constraints; the opportunity to reflect upon and criticise
practice; and the different purposes that design and research practice serve. In
research, it is necessary to make explicit, contextualise, communicate and justify
design decisions that often remain implicit in a professional context. The deep
reflection, the profound engagement with methodology, and the need for a highly
structured approach is often radically new to PhD students in design in the early
phases of carrying out their research. Likewise, the role that artefacts play in a
research process is often entirely different: they do not need to function, but rather
to provide explanatory power and serve as theoretical considerations in their own
right.
However, the PhDs also acknowledge the basic investigative qualities of
design practice on the one hand, and the amount of design decisions included in
research practice on the other. While some phases – like the beginning and the
end – might appear very different in research, those differences indeed blur in the
process up to a point where they cannot be separated anymore. It seems as if this is
when theoretical reflections effectively influence design practice, and when prac-
tice reflects back on the conceptual considerations. The PhDs report that once they
regarded text, concepts and theories as just another design material, writing be-
came an integral part of the professional practice as a researcher. And it might turn
INTRODUCTION 015
out that in a few years time, the question of design and research practices will no
longer provoke such debate.
1 The term refers to the prominent distinction drawn between research for, about and through d esign.
Research through design was introduced by Frayling. The distinctions have since been refined by
Jonas and Findeli, e.g., and have been adopted by HCI as well. See Jonas 2007; Zimmerman et al. 2007;
Frayling 1993; Findeli 1999.
2 See Findeli 2004.

WHERE ARE WE GOING? AN ASPIRATIONAL MAP
Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders
Introduction
The aim of this chapter is to provide young researchers and individuals new to the
field with views on where the field might be going as opposed to a focus on views
about where it has been or where it is now. I will do this with maps that point to the
future and describe where we are right now, where we could go in the future and
what we can do when we get there including what further destinations might emerge.
I will share aspirations, i.e. dreams for the future, instead of predictions.
Sitting on the Border
I should explain a little about my background before presenting the maps. I was ed-
ucated in psychology and anthropology simultaneously. With an advanced degree
in Experimental and Quantitative Psychology, I was expected to enter the academic
community as a university researcher and educator. Instead, I was hired as an ‘ex-
periment’ in interdisciplinary design in a design consultancy in 1981. This unique
situation let me play and learn on the border between the real world and academia.
To make a long story short, I have by now worked for over 30 years in the front
end of design, the fuzzy front end, where the aim is to figure out what to design and
what not to design. I learned how to work in the front end of design while I was a de-
sign research practitioner. Today I spend most of my time teaching what I learned
in practice to students at universities.
Since I have been working at the front end of design practice and design re-
search for a long time, I have witnessed first hand many of the changes that have
taken place.1 When I started in 1981, design was mainly about giving shape to the
future. But today the action has moved also to the front end where design is about
making sense of the future.
Making Maps
In 2006 I was asked to write a paper describing the state of design research in practice
at that time.2 The field was in a state of flux and it was confusing to many people.
WHERE ARE WE GOING? AN ASPIRATIONAL MAP 017

I was struggling to explain what was going on and then I discovered that if I could
make a map, I could see what I was talking about and then tell others where I was
and what I saw there. So here is the 2006 map that positions the design research ap-
proaches of the day relative to one another in a map-like landscape. (See Figure 1 on
page 109.)
This map is based on a grid where the latitudinal lines describe the degree to
which the approaches placed on the map are research-led or design-led. Approaches
lead by people trained as researchers can be found in the bottom half and ap-
proaches lead by designers in the top half. It has longitudinal lines describing the
degree to which the approaches fall to the expert-driven side or the participatory
side. Approaches that are practiced from an expert mindset can be found on the left
whereas participatory approaches can be found on the right side of the map.
This map has been useful for visualizing and understanding the relationships
between the various design research approaches that are used in practice. I have
used it as a tool for planning design research projects. For example, the top half of
the map is good territory to be in when you are exploring in the front end of the de-
sign process and the lower half is most effective later in the process, for example,
when you are validating concepts or usability testing prototypes. The map has also
proved to be useful as a learning tool for students who are just beginning to get the
lay of the land. This is especially true in courses where students come together from
a number of different academic disciplines. I invite the students to mark the ‘places’
on the map that they are familiar with as well as the places they would like to explore
in the class that they are taking with me.
I have noticed that over time there have been more additions on the top half
of the map, the design-led side, than there have been on the bottom half of the map
where the research-led approaches sit. This revised version of the map3 shows a few
of the emerging methods with more of the examples of new methods appearing in
the top half. (See Figure 2 on page 109.) For example, the design-led approach that
began with cultural probes4 lead to empathy probes,5 design probes,6 as well as re-
flective and primitive probes,7 among others.
I started using a new map in 2012. (See Figure 3 on page 110.) Unlike the 2006
map, the new map was not a reflection of the current situation. It was a reflection of
where things might be heading, or at least where they seemed to me to be heading
at the time. The 2012 map positions approaches that are both design and design
research practices. There is just not much distinction between design and design
research anymore, especially in the front end of design.
The 2012 map shows a mapping across time as opposed to a mapping in space.
The 2012 map is a concentric set of rings that radiate outward from the current core
of designing (the back half circle) toward the edges of time. The three layers of time
emanate outward from the core. The first layer around the core refers to the world
as it is, the second layer to the near future, and the third layer to the speculative fu-
ture. Note that approaches that are practiced from an expert mindset can be found

on the left whereas participatory approaches can be found on the right side of the
map.
In the slice to the right, service design and social design are seen as manifes-
tations of the intent to serve people. In the middle, user experience and embodied
interaction aim to engage people. In the slice to the left, design interventions and
critical design intend to provoke or stir people up. Design fiction sits midway be-
tween engaging and provoking on the outside ring of the speculative future. The
rest of the outer ring is empty and evokes thoughts about what will sit between serv-
ing and engaging in the speculative future.
A New Map
What I most want to share with the young researchers and individuals new to the
field is a third map. It is a hybrid map that combines the previous two maps to give
a view of where we might go in the future in the context of where we were in 2006.
(See Figure 4 on page 110.) Note that the two maps overlap, but not completely. They
intersect only on the top part of the 2006 map where the design-led approaches have
been active in the last ten years. Thus, the growth in future design and research land-
scapes will come more from design-led than from research-led approaches. The
hybrid map exposes vast new territories for exploration in design practice and design
research.
There are more rings of time in the new map because the point of making the
map is to provoke dreaming about what could be. The rings here represent not only
increasing scales of time, increasing scope of context, but also increasing levels of
complexity, and increasing impact of the future consequences of design. Similar
thoughts of extending design to be an anticipatory practice are also discussed by
Tonkinwise.8
We can see there are three basic directions of intent – provoking, engaging and
improving that are similar to the slices of intent from the 2012 map. However, the
slice previously referred to as ‘serving’ has been renamed to ‘improving’. There are
no longer boundaries (dashed lines) between the slices. The slices have become di-
rections of intent. It is now easy to move across the intentional states as the aims of
the project demand. However, there is usually one vector of primary interest and in-
tensity. There is also a hidden connection between provoking and improving that
you can see when the map is three-dimensional. If you cut the diagram out, form it
into a funnel and then tape it together along the straight edge, you will get a map
that positions provoking next to improving.

Directions of Intent
One direction of intent points to design for provoking. For example, we might pro-
voke people to think about or act upon what they see. Sometimes we provoke peo-
ple in order to incite change. The approaches that are positioned in the direction of
provoking include design interventions (which might also lean toward improving),
critical design and design fiction.
The second direction of intent points to design for engaging. We might use de-
sign / design research to engage people for the purpose of entertainment or learning.
Interaction design is in the innermost ring with embodied interaction in the next ring.
And the third direction of intent points to design for improving. For example,
we might use design / design research to improve the environment in order to im-
prove people’s lives. This direction of intent tends to be participatory in that we are
co-designing with the people who constitute the experts of their own lives and whose
lives are at stake. The approaches that are positioned in the direction of improving
include service design and social design. Transformation design sits between im-
proving and engaging. Transition design9 also appears to be on the trajectory that
is aimed at improving.
The hybrid map is still a sketch at this point so the positioning of approaches
on it is approximate and the labels are tentative. The positionings of the approaches
will vary based on the perspective of the viewer or map user. Feel free to play with
the map and move things around so that it makes sense to you.
Making Sense of the Future by Giving Shape to It
In the past designers were called upon mainly to give shape to the future. In fact,
many people still see design in this way. But now design / research practitioners are
being called on to help make sense of the future. It used to be that making sense of
the future was the step that came before the step of giving shape to the future. This
is no longer always the case. We are now exploring new landscapes where we make
sense of the future by giving shape to it. New forms and means of visualisation in
multidimensional spaces are enabling this exploration.
What we see now is the blending of research and design to the point where
they cannot be pulled apart. Designers do research and researchers use design meth-
ods. As our design / research activities begin to move into the outer rings of the hy-
brid map the scale, level, scope and the impact of the consequences of our work will
become greatly magnified. We need to find new ways to give shape to the future so
that the consequences of our decisions and actions can be explored in advance. So
let’s dream about what might be in the outer rings of the hybrid map. How can we
learn to give shape to proposals that help us to see and make sense of the future?

Thanks
Thanks to Sapna Singh at The Ohio State University for wide-ranging discussions
about the future of graduate design education and to Pieter Jan Stappers from TU
Delft for insightful comments about the hybrid map.
1 Sanders, L. and Stappers, P. J: ‘From designing to co-designing to collective dreaming: Three slices in
time’. ACM Interactions, 2014.
2 Sanders, E. B.-N.: ‘Design research in 2006’, Design Research Quarterly 1, no. 1, Design Research Society,
September 2006.
3 Sanders, L.: ‘An evolving map of design practice and design research’, Interactions Magazine,
November 1, 2008.
4 Gaver, W., Dunne, A., and Pacenti, E,: ‘Cultural probes’, Interactions, Vol 6, Issue 1, Jan / Feb 1999.
5 Mattelmaki, T. and Battarbee, K.: ‘Empathy probes’, in PDC 02 Proceedings of the Participatory Design
Conference, T. Binder, J. Gregory, I. Wagner (Eds.), Malmo, Sweden, 2002.
6 Mattelmaki, T.: Design Probes, Ph. D. diss., University of Art and Design Helsinki, 2006.
7 Loi, D.: ‘Reflective probes, primitive probes and playful triggers’. Working paper, EPIC07: Ethnographic
Praxis in Industry Conference, Keystone, Colo., October 2007.
8 Tonkinwise, C.: Prototyping risks when design is disappearing, Current 06: Designing Wisdom: Prospects,
Practices and Provocations, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, 2014, pp. 16–20.
9 Irwin, T., Kossoff, G., Tonkinwise, C. and Scupelli, P. Transition Design: 2015, white paper from Carnegie
Mellon University School of Design, 2015.

THE RESOURCEFUL SOCIAL EXPERT:
DEFINING THE FUTURE CRAFT OF DESIGN
RESEARCH
Mike Press
Design and research are indivisible. Today’s designers – especially those who work
in service, product, environmental or interaction design – are users and creators of
knowledge, transferring that knowledge to (and creating it with) users, clients and
co-creators. Perhaps twenty years ago when we were still in the process of defining
design research, then debates over the relationship between theory and practice, ac-
ademia and the professional domain, had some relevance. No longer.
The trick, therefore, is to create and define models of design research practice
that work across ‘professional’ and ‘academic’ spheres, that acknowledge there are
hybrid practices within design that create knowledge in diverse ways, arising from
different contexts. These models also have to be constantly fluid and adaptable. We
may have moved on considerably in twenty years, but we remain in a state of beta.
And we always will.
One aspect of our practice that we perhaps have not shifted away from as much
as we might is an approach to research that is self-centred and self-obsessed, in-
wardly directed and egotistical. We find elements of this in both of our ‘worlds’ – ac-
ademia and professional practice. In short, it’s anti-social. This is a culture of re-
search and practice that has no place in the twenty first century (to be honest, it
should not have had a place in any century). It is time to move on and be radical in
our practices and ambitions.
My argument is to reframe design research around the notion of social exper-
tise, and indeed of social knowledge: knowledge that is open, shared, created collab-
oratively and co-operatively. At times it is created in universities, other times outside
it, and very often involving partners that span professional domains. It is knowl-
edge that is democratic, that involves all kinds of people in its creation and meets
their wider needs. It is part of our collective commons.
Defining the Social Expert
Antonio Stradivari was the Steve Jobs of his age: a hectoring obsessive, who ruled
his Cremona violin workshop with a ruthless vision of perfectionism. The crafts-
men he employed were chained to their workbenches: they really were. When not

crafting the finest violins and cellos the world has ever seen, the apprentices would
sleep on bags of straw under their bench. It is a model of autocratic leadership that
many have emulated since; but you do wonder why they bother.
When the 93-year-old Stradivari died in 1737, the quality of his workshop’s
musical instruments died with him. Despite the best efforts of his sons and master
craftsmen to maintain the preeminent quality and reputation of the Stradivari name,
the instruments they turned out were not a patch on those that had preceded them.
Great efforts were made to analyse the pattern of the original instruments, the ma-
terials, even the precise formulation of the varnish, in a vain attempt to create a de-
sign template that could replicate his original genius. But these efforts fell flat, in
every sense of the word.
According to Richard Sennett in his book The Craftsman,1 the dramatic col-
lapse in quality can be attributed to Stradivari’s very style of professional expertise.
Antonio Stradivari, Sennett argues, was an antisocial expert. Antisocial expertise is
driven by a competitive zeal which occludes the notion of co-operation, holding up
world class excellence as the one goal, and based on a strict sense of hierarchy. The
antisocial expert lacks essential skills required to ensure that the good work they do
can live on after them; their unique expertise is held within the firewall of their own
tacit knowledge. As Sennett explains:
‘There is an inherent inequality of knowledge and skill between expert and
non-expert. Antisocial expertise emphasizes the sheer fact of invidious comparison.
One obvious consequence of emphasizing inequality is the humiliation and resent-
ment this expert can arouse in others; a more subtle consequence is to make the ex-
pert himself or herself feel embattled’.2
Sennett contrasts this with sociable expertise, making the case that ‘A well-
crafted institution will favour the sociable expert; the isolated expert sends a warn-
ing signal that the organization is in trouble’3. Sociable expertise is the very essence
of craftsmanship – a concept elaborated and explored so expertly by Sennett. The
social expert relies on good work and transparent practices for the basis of their
authority. Driven by a desire to improve one’s own work, ‘the sociable experts tend
to be good at explaining and giving advice to their customers. The sociable expert,
that is, is comfortable with mentoring, the modern echo of medieval in loco par-
entis’.4
Sennett’s sociable craftsman ‘conducts a dialogue between concrete practices
and thinking’5 and is in many senses crafting knowledge transfer. Karen Yair in
Crafting Capital has described this ‘craft thinking’ which ‘enables innovation by
working with – rather than against – the restrictions of a given situation. In this anal-
ysis, craft thinking applies both to engineering and to team working: Sennett de-
scribes the craftsperson as a ‘sociable expert’, able to facilitate innovation by stretch-
ing the competencies of others within reasonable parameters’.6
This is precisely the model of design research and practice relevant for our
age – an age of open design, ever-evolving collaborative partnerships between crea-
THE RESOURCEFUL SOCIAL EXPERT: DEFINING THE FUTURE CRAFT OF DESIGN R

ESEARCH 023
tive microbusinesses, social design, user-centredness, knowledge transfer, empow-
erment and inclusivity. Let us pull out three key arguments in favour of this as a use-
ful and usable model of design research.
Co-designing with Consumers
First, the rise of open design and innovation, linked to technologies that provide
‘consumers’ with potential to become creative ‘prosumers’ requires that designers
need to shift to encouraging more creative and designerly self-reliance in others.
Charles Leadbeater, in Production by the Masses, argues that professionals (design-
ers, for example) ‘should educate us towards self-help and self-reliance as much as
possible. Modern society trains us to be workers and consumers. Postindustrial in-
stitutions should train us for self-management and self-assessment’.7
Both the opportunity and the challenge here is for designers to see their prior-
ities increasingly in terms of constructing robust systems of scaffolding within
which people feel confident and enabled to design and construct new futures for
themselves. It is an opportunity in the sense that it represents an ambitious and
highly relevant ‘new frontier’ in design. It is a challenge in that it runs counter to
the ego-oriented view of design in which designers are ‘gods’ of new universes of
their own making.
Designing Public Services
Second, the design of new forms of public services demands a wholly new form of
design practice, the success of which relies critically on the social expert model. In
recent insightful research into the future of the UK design consultancy industry,
Cooper, Evans and Williams set out a number of likely future business models for
design. One they entitle SIG (Special Interest Group) Niche Network and describe it
thus: ‘“Facebook” social network approach: essentially a C2B2C (consumer to busi-
ness to consumer) model. The structure involves co-design / participation between
design communities and special interest groups regional hubs. The designer’s role
is as facilitator and mediator. Fees would be based on scale of contribution and
would be reliant on “long tail” economics, outsourcing production and distribution.
High public sector engagement such as the re-design of services. Other clients
would include subgroups, empowered communities, and local authorities’.8
This would appear to describe much of the work undertaken by consultancies
such as Engine, Taylor Haig, Snook, The Young Foundation and others. The design
researcher as social expert is clearly essential for such work.

Construction of Social Problems
Third, and intimately linked to the above argument, design provides the potential
for people not just to co-design services, but to construct social problems. As such
it offers potential to enable new forms of participatory democracy. The danger of
service design for public services is that it becomes incorporated within the institu-
tional paradigm that it has the potential to challenge, and thus becomes just an-
other technocratic tool of the public sector. Simon Blyth and Lucy Kimbell have pro-
vided a vital analysis that comes out of service design practice, but which suggests
a significant shift of emphasis:
‘Rather than claiming to solve social problems, we want to argue for the rele-
vance and value of Design in actively, critically and reflexively contributing to their
construction … We want to invite designers to make this more clearly part of their
practice. We think there are things about Design that make it particularly good at
doing this, although the positioning of design-as- problem-solving tends to have ig-
nored them’.9 Again, this helps us in defining the challenges and practices of a de-
sign researcher as social expert working in this field.
Resourceful Social Expertise
These three zones of new design practice – co-creative prosumption, design for pub-
lic services, and the construction of social problems – will be critical for our future
and design wholly new models of design research. He may have crafted damned fine
fiddles, but I have severe doubts that Antonio Stradivari would have been particu-
larly good at facilitating workshops for co-designing new long-term care services for
those with dementia. But I may be wrong; he may have had more than one string to
his bow.
But these zones in some cases lay far beyond the familiar and comfortable ter-
ritories of design. That some designers have succeeded, in some cases spectacularly
well, in rising to the challenges, suggests that we need to identify the essential char-
acteristics of leadership that can ensure success. My ‘feeling’ for this (in the ab-
sence of any actual data) is that a critical requirement is resourcefulness. Emily
Campbell makes the following points with regard to resourcefulness and design:
‘Resourcefulness is ingenuity: the ability to think on your feet; the ability to adapt
one solution to another problem; the ability to make something out of little or noth-
ing. But resourcefulness is also the confidence that comes with knowledge: having
a skill or a range of skills at your disposal; knowing enough to make a wise choice;
having analogous experience; having connections to draw on and knowing how to
collaborate. This knowledge feeds the ingenuity, and vice versa’.10

ESEARCH 025
As such the design researcher is a resourceful social expert who is able not only
to generate new insights on complex problems by collaborative and participatory
means, but also to transfer and exchange knowledge of that process itself to all the
participants. In this way the boundaries of knowledge are rapidly extended and the
potential for creative solutions is multiplied many times over.
Some Future Priorities
If we accept that this is the case, then how should academic design researchers in-
teract with the world around them?
First, they should focus on developing productive knowledge-based relation-
ships with micro-businesses. We are currently witnessing a massive rise in micro
businesses – largely in professional domains. What hampers their development is
the lack of access to research and development expertise and knowledge. That is
where academic design researchers could become ideal partners, and through pro-
jects such as Design in Action in Scotland,11 they already are.
Second, a vital part of the knowledge that universities need to provide is anal-
yses, tools and methods that enable co-design and co-creation to take place. While
universities certainly do not have the monopoly of good ideas with regard to this,
they have a vital role to play. We are currently developing an innovation hub in a
Scottish hospital that will provide opportunities for patients and carers to redesign
the provision of healthcare. Design researchers, working alongside clinicians and
patients can evolve new approaches and new design tools. Our task is then to eval-
uate them and disseminating our collective findings.
Third, design researchers also have to reconsider their role to better support
user innovation to flourish and contribute to national wealth and welfare, provid-
ing direct access to user communities. Academics tend to focus their external rela-
tionships with companies or clearly defined public sector or voluntary organisa-
tions. Working in partnership with loose, ever-shifting groups is a challenge to our
bureaucratic ways of doing things. But we have to find a way to adapt.
The role of the design researcher is a diverse and challenging one. It centres
on recognising what we do as a form of social expertise that we approach with re-
sourcefulness. Furthermore it requires us to constantly redefine our practices and
methods, to treat research as a design project: we fail fast, we redefine, we prototype
like we’re right, we listen like we’re wrong.
We never forget that design research is in a state of constant beta.

1 Sennett, R.: The Craftsman. London, Penguin, 2009.
2 Ibid., p. 249.
3 Ibid., p. 246.
4 Ibid., p. 248.
5 Ibid., p. 9.
6 Yair, K.: Crafting Capital: new technologies, new economies. London, Crafts Council, 2012, p. 4.
7 Leadbeater, Ch.: Production by the masses: professionals and postindustrial public services. London,
Demos, 2009, p. 186.
8 Cooper, R., Williams, A. and Evans, M.: ‘New Design Business Models – Implications for the Future of
Design Management’, in: Cooper, R., Junginger, S. and Lockwood, T. (Eds.), The Handbook of Design
Management, Berg Publishers, Oxford, UK, 2011, pp.495–511, p. 24.
9 Blyth, S. and Kimbell, L.: Design Thinking and the Big Society: From solving personal troubles to designing
social problems. London, Actant and Taylor Haig, 2011, p.10.
10 Campbell, E.: You know more than you think you do: design as resourcefulness & self-reliance. London,
RSA Projects, 2009, p. 2.
11 www.designinaction.com

ESEARCH 027
THE MYTH OF THE DESIGN ANDROGYNE
Alain Findeli
It is indeed a nice opportunity to be invited to summarise one’s personal convic-

tions about some choice and ‘much-debated’ issues in the field of design research.
There is no doubt that issue concerning the distinction and, more important, the
relationship between design practice and design research practice has occupied my
mind and my teaching for quite some time now. I just had a look at the editorial in
the summer 1999 issue of Design Issues and I wonder what else I could add that
would not be déjà-vu, that would not just be repeating myself by merely referring to
a few milestones that paved the way to the project-grounded research model1. These
successive prototypes of the ‘primary generator’2 have been put to work in various
contexts, leading to the following observation: the fundamental epistemological
framework of the model (pragmaticism) remains sometimes difficult to understand,
especially by students and colleagues trained in the Cartesian intellectual culture,
but once the spark ignites, its fruitfulness is warranted (I adopt Goethe’s proto-prag-
matist criterion, fruitfulness, to test the validity of a theoretical proposal).
The main characteristic of the model is summed up in the central maxim of
the pragmatist gospel: ‘If thou wantest to really understand the world, put it into
project’. In other words, this epistemological principle posits that valid and trust-
worthy knowledge is best produced in experiential situations of inquiry. Our task as
researchers remains to make sure the inquiry is rigorous and conducted according
to what the research community at large recognises as being scientifically consist-
ent and valid – provided one cares about such orthodoxy (I assume this issue will be
discussed elsewhere in this book). In John Dewey’s terms, the task is to turn a merely
empirical (project) experience into an experimental one.
Why insist on the above maxim? Because the concepts we use and produce
through our thinking activity, if situated in experience, become alive and signifi-
cant, instead of remaining abstract like mathematical concepts. In the two first
chapters of The Quest for Certainty ,3 Dewey observes that the space of abstraction
(or pure theory) is much more comfortable than the ever-changing sublunary world
we inhabit, so that the temptation is strong to escape from the latter to play around
with concepts and build attractive theoretical models that have little relevancy to
the experiential world. Moreover, by choosing as experimental situation of our re-
search question a [design] project situation, that is a situation where a design ques-
tion is at stake, we guarantee (and test) not only the liveliness and agility of our con-
cepts and models, but also their operative capacity, their potency, in short: their
fruitfulness. To paraphrase Dewey again, design research is to be ‘prophetic’, not
merely descriptive.

The question raised by the issue of ‘Design / Research’ thus finds a preliminary
answer: one needs a design question to pursue a research question. In scientific jar-
gon: the recommended terrain for a proper design research inquiry, its laboratory,
is the field of a design project. Let us now see how these two interrelated questions
can be chosen, better said: constructed.
The research question is obviously the leading question, since our goal is to
engage in research. But what then are (good) design research questions, what do
they look like, where do they arise, where can we find them, borrow them from?
Here is a better way to ask: What should the answers to these questions be good for?
In one of his lectures, Ezio Manzini once stated, ‘The purpose of design research is
to produce knowledge useful for design practice’. The statement can be read in two
ways: specifically or generically. Specifically it addresses what is usually called ‘re-
search for design’, meaning that in order to carry out a specific design project, some
form of relevant knowledge is necessary. The more complex the situation is, the
more sophisticated (and multidisciplinary) the necessary knowledge must be. The
relevant knowledge is either available (‘search’ situations) or it must be produced
(‘research’ situations). In the latter case, it is usually not transferable to other design
situations. The generic is more ambitious, since it calls for the production of a form
of knowledge that is fundamental or generalisable enough to be useful to design
practice ‘in general’, whatever the specific project situation or brief may be. Using
the same widespread terminology, it is therefore research for design, carried out
with the scientific ambition of research into design, and preferably through design,
if one adopts the project-grounded method. Needless to add, my conviction is that,
provided we replace usefulness by relevance, such endeavour is a worthy programme
for design research. The difference I make between usefulness and relevance is the
following: usefulness refers to the instrumentality of a ready-to-hand toolkit, whereas
the property of relevance presumes that its fruitfulness must be constructed anew
by the designer-researcher according to each situation, through a sort of permanent
hermeneutic process. In Goethe’s phenomenological terms, it requires that one has
visualised (mentally) the archetypal model (Urmodell) clearly and vividly enough to
understand what form it should be given in each specific situation in order to be
able to proceed with the design process. From this standpoint, the task of design
research is to generate such archetypal models.
Since, as I mentioned earlier, all this is mere repetition, I will now carry on in
aphoristic manner:
• The purpose of design research is to improve design practice.

• Attentive knowledge of design practice is necessary if one at-
tempts to improve it.
• To describe and understand design practice, it may be conven-
ient to distinguish: the product, the process, the actors (see
for instance the model of the Eclipse of the Object 4).
THE MYTH OF THE DESIGN ANDROGYNE 029

• Knowledge of the purpose of design practice is necessary if
one attempts to improve it.
• The purpose of design practice is to improve or at least main-
tain the habitability of the world of all people involved in the
design project under consideration.
• Habitability is therefore a central scientific subject matter of
design research.
• Another term to describe the science (or discipline? see
‘Discipline / Indiscipline’) of habitability is: extended human
ecology.
• Design cannot claim human ecology as its proper scientific
field: geography, mesology (Augustin Berque), ecology, envi-
ronmental psychology, anthropology, semiotics, etc. obviously
also have a say in this domain.
• There is however a specificity to the designerly approach to
human ecology: 1) it is eager to extend its concerns, not only
to the physical, biological and psycho-societal but also to the
spiritual / cultural dimensions of habitability in the outer and
inner, individual and collective, worlds; and 2) its approach
is diagnostic, projective and ameliorative, not merely analyt-
ical, descriptive or interpretive.
• If, for all these reasons, design deserves to be considered as a
discipline (my claim), its main characteristic is not the origi-
nality of its subject matter, of its scientific object, which it
shares with other disciplines, but its implicit philosophical
anthropology, i.e. the ‘theory’ of the human being it adopts.
In this respect, Moholy-Nagy could not be more perspicuous
by stating that design was not a profession but an attitude.
• The research question vs. design question polarity can there-
fore be displayed in a new light: behind every design question,
there lies a more fundamental research question that deals
with the human habitability of the world. This extremely gen-
eral question expresses itself each time anew, each time there
is a design project to be carried out. The task of the design
researcher is to uncover the specific anthropological issue at
stake and to elaborate the proper research inquiry; the task
of the designer is to deliver an adequate proposal to the actors /
stakeholders.

Thus goes the myth of the Design Androgyne, neither practitioner nor researcher,
but both.
Now, referring to the original working title of this book, ARE WE THERE YET?
Let us break it down into 3 questions:
1. Where is THERE?
If THERE means that which our community recognises as design research has
gleaned enough credibility and respectability to secure a seat in the academic arena,
then one can say that we have achieved it in many countries. Thanks to their great
familiarity with abductive and analogical reasoning, designers have managed to
quickly grasp the basics of their new profession as researchers. They now master
the academic / scientific rhetoric and the corresponding methodological toolbox;
they publish in well-respected scholarly journals, including the ones they have cre-
ated; they organise international conferences, seminars and workshops; they have
built doctoral programmes and research labs; they have formed research societies
and communities, manage lists and newsletters, collect archives, and even already
have a history; in brief, they have collected all the ingredients necessary to construct
a research tradition. True, access to significant research grants and contracts is still
somewhat wanting, but we’re underway.
If, however, THERE means that a consensus has been reached around a dom-
inant paradigm for research that is robust enough to be able to progress to more in-
novative steps of development instead of indulging into a kind of autistic solipsism,
then we still have a long road to travel, since important so-called ‘unanswered ques-
tions’ still lie in front of the door. Let me pick a few I would be happy to find the lei-
sure to grapple with:
• There is still the lack of aesthetics proper to design: the bits

and pieces we have borrowed from major philosophical aes-
theticians are not really fit for the job (see ‘Borrowing / Steal-
ing’). Our contribution to experiential, everyday aesthetics
could be much more decisive. How, to offer an example, do
we describe and prescribe the aesthetic quality of a service, of
a public policy?
• I don’t think we should satisfy ourselves with the creativity the-
ories on which our practice has relied since the 60s. A more
updated model should be developed, and the artistic reference
temporarily abandoned (maybe see ‘Text / Object’?).

• Related to the latter, our epistemology of design, i.e. our the-
ory of the project, still remains to be worked out, otherwise it
will be our neighbouring disciplines that will keep inventing
and defining our central concepts (see ‘human-centred de-
sign’ by computer sciences, ‘design thinking’ by manage-
ment sciences, ‘experience design’ by cognitive ergonomics,
‘evidence-based practice’ by the medical sciences). To para-
phrase Otto Scharmer’s Theory U, there is a blind spot in de-
sign theory, which concerns the inner space from which our
practice originates: we usually pretty well know what we do
(our end products) and how we do it (our methodological
tools) but ignore the inner source from which we operate,
what the author names ‘the quality of attention’. To be clear
about the relationship between the inner and the outer world
in design, what I have termed the ‘anthropological issue’, I
consider one of the most pressing and stimulating research
(and pedagogical) challenge currently, since, in keeping with
Scharmer, ‘the success of an intervention depends on the in-
terior condition of the intervener’.6
• Another epistemological obstacle has to do with design think-
ing. How can we content ourselves with the current ‘working’
definitions? A more accurate and discriminate characterisa-
tion of the complex logics at work while designing would be
most welcome. While deductive and strictly inductive logics,
reputedly pivotal in scientific inquiry, are rather accidental in
design, designers manipulate a large palette of different log-
ics: the already mentioned abductive and analogical, but also
deontic, rhetorical, hermeneutic, semiotic, phenomenologi-
cal, narrative, heuristic logics. At what stage of the process are
these more effective? How should they relate to each other?
Are they always compatible? Such are some research topics at
hand.
• We have witnessed an indisputable progress in the descrip-
tion and understanding of the design process, with a multi-
tude of diagrams currently on the market. However, the em-
phasis has largely been put on the conception phase, as if the
reception phase would follow almost automatically. I think
an effort should be made to better understand the phenome-
nology of use in order to properly address what it means to
inhabit the world.
• A last word on the co-design process and the correlated con-
cepts of expertise, accountability, responsibility, engagement,

empowerment, democracy, etc.: maybe some astute ‘borrow-
ings’ (‘Borrowing / Stealing’) from the sociology of organisat
ions, ANT, political science, management theories, etc. would
be welcome here. The ideal configuration would indeed be a
multidisciplinary research situation.7
2. Who is WE?
WE is obviously both the design and design research communities.

The DNA of the latter has, since the beginnings, been mainly anchored in the
British and Usonian intellectual traditions. An opening to a richer intellectual ‘bio-
diversity’ would be welcome. I am, personally, quite curious to follow what the po-
tential contribution of the recent and belated awakening of a French and franco-
phone research community will be: will its recent (and also belated) discovery of the
pragmatist philosophical tradition convert it to the dominant paradigm or will its
Cartesian DNA galvanise it? The same could be said, of course, of the German, Chi-
nese, Australian, Korean, Turkish, Italian, etc. potential contributions.
If we turn to the design community, one realises that the opening of such new
fields of practice as UX design, service design, public policy design and social design
requires very complex knowledge and sophisticated methodologies in order to be
properly addressed. Whereas some of this knowledge is readily available in related
disciplines, some of it is still lacking and must therefore be produced by r esearch.
3. When is YET?
YET is never, hopefully! The main property of a myth is its timelessness: it remains
alive but must be revived indefinitely. Sometimes it falls asleep; sometimes its voice
is audible again. The myth of the Design Androgyne is not new: already at the Bau-
haus, where the new figure of the designer was being shaped, they idealised the un-
ion of the Form- and Werkmeisters, two separate kinds of teachers in Weimar, within
a single person in Dessau: the ‘young master’. The famous ‘art and technology’
polarity of the Bauhaus was one possible incarnation of the universal and ageless
‘spirit and matter’ metaphysical and archetypal polarity.8 Whereas, more than a cen-
tury ago, it was with the definition of design practice that they started to struggle,
now it is the ‘perspectives on design research’ that busy us.
Thus goes the myth of the Design Androgyne.

1 Findeli, A. (1999), ‘Introduction’ to the special issue of Design Issues on design research, XV, 2, 1–3;
Findeli, A. (2003), ‘Theorie und Praxis: Eine neue Einheit. Ein funktionstüchtiges Modell für die Design-
forschung’, hfg forum, 18, 70–80; Findeli, A., (2005a), ‘Die projektgeleitete Forschung: eine Methode der
Designforschung’, in Michel, R. (Ed.), Erstes Designforschungssymposium, Zurich, SwissDesignNet-
work, 2005, pp.40–51; Findeli, A. and Bousbaci, R. (2005b), ‘L’éclipse de l’objet dans les théories du pro-
jet en design’, The Design Journal, VIII, 3, 35–49; Findeli, A. (2006), ‘Qu’appelle-t-on ‘théorie’ en design?
Réflexions sur l’enseignement et la recherche en design’, in Flamand, B. (Ed.), Le design. Essai sur les
théories et les pratiques, Paris, éd. IFM, 77–98 ; Findeli, A. and Coste, A. (2007), ‘De la recherche-créa-
tion à la recherche-projet: un cadre théorique et méthodologique pour la recherche architecturale’, Lieux
Communs, 10, 139–61; Findeli, A. et al. (2008), ‘Research Through Design and Transdisciplinarity: A Ten-
tative Contribution to the Methodology of Design Research’, in Minder, B. (Ed.), Focused – Current design
research projects and methods, Berne, SDN, 67–94; Findeli, A. (2010), ‘Searching for Design Research
Questions. A conceptual Clarification’, in Rosan Chow, Wolfgang Jonas and Gesche Joost (Eds.), Ques-
tions, Hypotheses and Conjectures, Berlin, iUniverse, 286–303. Sorry for self-quoting.
2 Darke, J.: ‘The Primary Generator and the Design Process’, Design Studies, 1, 1, 36–44. First published in
1978 in lttelson, W. H., Albanese, C., and Rogers, W. R. (Eds.) EDRA9 Proceedings, University of Arizona, 1979.
3 Dewey, J.: The Quest for Certainty, N.Y., Minton, Balch & Co, 1929.
4 Findeli, A. and Bousbaci, R.: ‘L’éclipse de l’objet dans les théories du projet en design’, The Design
Journal, VIII, 3, 2005, p. 35–49.
5 Scharmer, O.: Theory U, San Francisco, Berret-Koehler, 2009.
6 Ibid., p. 7
7 Findeli, A. et al.: ‘Research Through Design and Transdisciplinarity: A Tentative Contribution to the Meth-
odology of Design Research’, in Minder, B. (Ed.), Focused – Current design research projects and methods,
Berne, SDN, 2008, p. 67–94.
8 Findeli, A.: ‘The Bauhaus Project: An Archetype for Design Education in the New Millenium’, The Structurist,
39/40, 1999–2000, p. 36–43.
References
The nature of the editors’ brief (‘contribute a personal stance’) explains the following, seemingly complacent,
list of references. This essay turned out to be a welcome opportunity to do some housekeeping in past mate-
rial and to find out if I could construct a thread that would give it some coherence.
Darke, J. (1979). ‘The Primary Generator and the Design Process’, Design Studies, 1, 1, 36–44. First published
in 1978 in lttelson, W. H., Albanese, C., and Rogers, W. R. (Eds.) EDRA9 Proceedings, University of Arizona.
Dewey, J. (1929), The Quest for Certainty, N.Y., Minton, Balch & Co.
Findeli, A. (1999), ‘Introduction’ to the special issue of Design Issues on design research, XV, 2, 1–3.
Findeli, A. (1999–2000), ‘The Bauhaus Project: An Archetype for Design Education in the New Millenium’,
The Structurist, 39/40, 36–43.
Findeli, A. (2003), ‘Theorie und Praxis: Eine neue Einheit. Ein funktionstüchtiges Modell für die Design-
forschung’, hfg forum, 18, 70–80.
Findeli, A., (2005a), ‘Die projektgeleitete Forschung: eine Methode der Designforschung’, in Michel, R. (Ed.),
Erstes Designforschungssymposium, Zurich, SwissDesignNetwork, 2005, pp.40–51.
Findeli, A. and Bousbaci, R. (2005b), ‘L’éclipse de l’objet dans les théories du projet en design’, The Design
Journal, VIII, 3, 35–49.
Findeli, A. (2006), ‘Qu’appelle-t-on ‘théorie’ en design? Réflexions sur l’enseignement et la recherche en
design’, in Flamand, B. (Ed.), Le design. Essai sur les théories et les pratiques, Paris, éd. IFM, 77–98.
Findeli, A. and Coste, A. (2007), ‘De la recherche-création à la recherche-projet: un cadre théorique et méth-
odologique pour la recherche architecturale’, Lieux Communs, 10, 139–61.
Findeli, A. et al. (2008), ‘Research Through Design and Transdisciplinarity: A Tentative Contribution to the
Methodology of Design Research’, in Minder, B. (Ed.), Focused – Current design research projects and meth-
ods, Berne, SDN, 67–94.
Findeli, A. (2010), ‘Searching for Design Research Questions. A conceptual Clarification’, in Rosan Chow,
Wolfgang Jonas and Gesche Joost (Eds.), Questions, Hypotheses and Conjectures, Berlin, iUniverse, 286–303.
Scharmer, O. (2009), Theory U, San Francisco, Berret-Koehler.

DOING RESEARCH: DESIGN RESEARCH IN THE
CONTEXT OF THE ‘PRACTICE TURN’
Claudia Mareis
Design research is currently going through a remarkable upward trend. Since fun-
damental systematic efforts towards a scientific foundation of design began with
the design methods movement in the 1960s, one has been able to observe design re-
search taking shape as a practice-based research model in the course of numerous
educational reforms at art schools and universities up through today. In this model,
research object and method seem to merge seamlessly. In fact, primarily a prac-
tice-based research through design is preferred, one that also involves – aside from
a complex new definition and negotiation of research actors and methods – a dis-
tinct discourse of the praxeological.1 This brings practice-based design research
closer, at least superficially, to more recent approaches in social and cultural
sciences that have devoted themselves to the research of practice theory against the
backdrop of the so-called ‘practice turn’. Comparable to these approaches, the prac-
tice-based design research is also profoundly concerned with the reciprocal relation-
ship of practice and theory construction as well as seeks new ways of understanding
knowledge production in research, in the mode of design-practical action. However,
design research also arises from a discourse tradition that differs in conceptual
terms from the genesis of other practice-theoretical approaches. Thus, the question
arises as to how practice-based design research is informed by fundamental postu-
lates and premises in the cultural and social sciences that generally form the basis
of the approaches of practice theory. This question will be explored here in a simul-
taneously theoretical and historical discussion that localises practice-based design
research.
Practice Theories: Material Agents and Knowledge Cultures
The diagnosis of the practice turn2 was launched in the social and cultural sciences.
This happened in the context of (socio-)constructivist science and technology studies
as practiced in the 1980s by researchers, like Bruno Latour, Steven Woolgar or Karin
Knorr Cetina.3 In addition, works from French sociology and cultural theory, such as
Pierre Bourdieu’s Outline of a Theory of Practice or Michel de Certeau’s The Practice
of Everyday Life, paved the way for a scientific acknowledgement of practice theories
in the 1970s and 1980s.4 In this context, sociologist Donald Schön’s study, The Re-
flective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (1983), should be emphasised
DOING RESEARCH: DESIGN RESEARCH IN THE CONTEXT OF THE ‘PRACTICE TURN’ 035
with regards to design.5 Here, Schön explains the significance of practical, experi-
ence-based knowledge against the backdrop of contemporary social debates on
knowledge and technology. Referring to Michael Polanyi’s concept of tacit knowing,
Schön directs the attention to the implicit knowledge of the practice that oftentimes
manifests itself not in words but in action and practical doing.6 Schön’s study on
trained specialists – who generated valuable insights into this practice, either in the
context of or when exercising their practical activity – would form the important the-
oretical groundwork for practice-based design research over the following decades.
The numerous works that have accumulated under the guiding concept of the
practice turn in recent years represent the attempt to better understand the heter-
ogeneous field of practice research by concentrating on and systematising practice
theories, while developing a profound comprehension of the complex dimension
that is practice. Although both the research field as well as the approaches for this
enterprise have proven to be quite varied, there still seems to be a common set of
interests and questions that interconnect practice theories. Theodore Schatzki, who
edited The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory (2001) with Karin Knorr Cetina and
Eike von Savigny, explains the common interest as follows: ‘A central core … of prac-
tice theorists conceives of practices as embodied, materially mediated arrays of
human activity centrally organised around shared practical understanding’.7 To
Andreas Reckwitz, practice theory represents a subcategory of social and cultural
theory, which neither understands the social – as opposed to many common theo-
ries – as a mental feature nor locates in discourses and interactions, but which
rather understands the practices themselves as the central location and mode of the
production and passing on of social and cultural meaning.8 In addition to focusing
on material objects, technical apparatuses and instruments, such a practice-theo-
retical analysis also looks at bodies, spaces and routines with(in) which their prac-
tice is actually realised and implemented: ‘A practice is thus a routinized way in
which bodies are moved, objects are handled, subjects are treated, things are de-
scribed and the world is understood’.9
Particularly pertinent examples of practice-theoretical approaches can be found,
as mentioned before, in the science and technology studies. These studies fostered
such approaches in order to better describe and identify the far-reaching material
dimension of knowledge and production of knowledge mostly neglected in science
theory. It is precisely this dimension of a materiality of knowledge that currently at-
tracts the interest of many design researchers. For example, in Designerly Ways of
Knowing (2006), Nigel Cross refers to a design-specific knowledge that was not only
materialised and embodied in design processes but also in their products.10 As the
sociologist John Law puts it, knowledge always takes on a material shape, whether
in ‘conversations, conference presentations, in articles, preprints, patents, or even
in the embodiment through competent scientists and technologists’.11
This perspective entails as a further consequence – at least for the science and
technology studies – that not only human but also non-human material actors and

entities be considered to determine the action. This viewpoint is prominently rep-
resented in the actor-network theory developed and propagated by Bruno Latour,
Madeleine Akrich, John Law and others in the context of lab and technique stud-
ies.12 Karen Bardad’s post-humanistic approach of agential realism essentially shares
the view that the capacity to act is not restricted to human actors.13 Theodore Schatzki
puts this in a nutshell: ‘Practice theory also joins a variety of “materialist” approaches
in highlighting how bundled activities interweave with ordered constellations of
non-human entities’.14 The possibilities of design and shaping of such material-
and practice-based knowledge production that connects human and non-human
actors hence seem correspondingly far-reaching and consequential. This also im-
plies that a practice-theoretical approach to scientific and design practice as pre-
sented here is designed inter- and multidisciplinarily per se: research is not under-
stood as a delineated place of knowledge production or knowledge but as a hybrid
formation of multiple practices and cultures of knowledge.15 With regard to design
research, one can observe various knowledge practices and cultures that are mutu-
ally influenced and shaped by aesthetic, technical, social or economic deliberations
and concepts.
At this point, the reference to the concept of culture with regard to knowledge
production is key: on one hand, with the expression of ‘knowledge culture’ intro-
duced by the sociologist Karin Knorr Cetina, attention is drawn to the concrete prac-
tices of knowledge production, and on the other hand, the fundamentally cultural
dimension of knowledge is emphasised. According to Knorr Cetina, linking the
concept of culture enhances the concept of knowledge and practice in several re-
spects: culture points, firstly, ‘to the fractures in unity and uniformity of practice’,
secondly, to the ‘thicket of a wide variety of patterns that overlap and accumulate in
life-world contexts’ and, thirdly, the cultural concept adds a ‘sensibility to symbols
and meanings’ to the concept of knowledge and practice.16 Knowledge cultures
thus differ from each other in many ways: they do not only exhibit different, partly
also contingent formations of practice and practices, but they differ in their evalu-
ation and historical perpetuation as well. In the following, the goal is to question
and illustrate how, from a historical perspective, specific knowledge cultures in de-
sign were formed, and which practice-theory models were able to establish them-
selves in this process of becoming a discipline.
Unfolding Between Practice and Theory17
The aforementioned aspects and interests holding together and advancing practice
theories are currently also intensely discussed in practice-based design research:
Which role does materialised or embodied knowledge play in the design processes?
How can designers’ practical competences be identified as genuine methods of
knowledge production in research as well? Here, the attributions to and expecta-
tions of design research basically materialise from a methodological point of view,
that is, by questioning and treating design and creative practices in the context of
research projects as epistemic practices, or, rather, research methods.18 However,
there are also relevant differences between the above-mentioned social and cultural
science approaches that emerged in the context of the ‘practice turn’ and prac-
tice-based design research. A fundamental difference seems to be in the degree of
attention given to the complex cultural and social dimension of design research. It
is precisely this dimension that to this day is often obscured or marginalised in de-
sign research debates – in favour of a standardising and programmatic view of de-
sign research as essentially practice-based or practice-led research. The simple fact
is that the current definition of design practices as research practices is not only
based on epistemological but also on social motivations as well as historically de-
termined motives and ideologies. Yet developing a differentiated understanding of
that fact should in many respects be fundamental to design research.
In this regard, the history of design research itself and its development into a
discipline in the 20th century is an important aspect. As stated by sociologist Franz
Schultheis, the emerging discipline of design research has had to assert itself in the
face of a dominant academic curriculum to this day – and to legitimise its autonomy
claim ‘in the shape of a sufficiently distinct ensemble of independent epistemolog-
ical, theoretical, and methodological coordinates and rules’.19 As a consequence,
the method discussions found in design research today are to be understood as
part of an academic discipline-formation process. According to Schultheis, the se-
lection and development of research methods that are deemed suitable as well as
the creation of convincing arguments for their scientific validity are key to forming
a discipline. In this context, it seems as if design research sees an essential unique
feature and a significant differentiating factor vis-à-vis other disciplines in its al-
most notoriously reclaimed relation to practice.
Yet precisely this process of becoming a discipline and the relation to practice
renegotiated in this process time and again seem to be difficult for design research
as well. This is because the history of design and design methodology in the 20th
century cannot be understood as a clearly delineated scientific specialisation per se,
but rather as a ‘praxeological hybridisation’ of practices and knowledge from the
fields of design, art, science and economy. For example, designers from the Bau-
haus school in the early 20th century were already discussing design projects and
practices in the context of contemporary scientific, technological and economical
questions.20 In the post-war period, the exchange between design practice and
science saw a further intensification. The 1960s saw an avid interest in transferring
scientific methods to design. At the Ulm School of Design, which is deemed the suc-
cessor to the Bauhaus in Germany, the perception was that the tasks of design in
the post-war period – due to their complexity – could only be solved by scientific-sys-
tematic methods.21 At the same time, the design methods movement was launched

in the Anglophone region: here, actors from various scientific and professional
fields pursued a scientification of design by systematising design methods.22 The
design activity, understood as a method of construction and synthesis, was categor-
ically distinguished from the scientific activity of analysis in the design methodol-
ogy of that time.23 The fundamental difference between design and science thus
was considered to consist in the different objectives of these two fields. It was as-
sumed that the ‘scientific method’ served to discover and analyse things that already
exist, ‘while the method of design’ was meant ‘to invent’ things ‘that do not yet ex-
ist’.24 This comparison between design and science resulted in an idealised image
of design that was supposed to go beyond theory and practice and open up ‘new in-
sights’, as Otl Aicher once tellingly stated.25 In the 1970s, for example, Siegfried Ma-
ser said theory essentially served ‘the improvement of practice’, which is why design
theories are supposed to primarily address ‘the practitioner’.26 At the same time,
however, such postulates were also accompanied by a close entanglement of under-
standings of theory and practice that even the most recent method discussions in
design research still seem to be unravelling – especially with regard to all the vari-
ous practice-based and practice-led research approaches that have emerged over
the last couple of years.27
As is generally known, the design methods movement collapsed after merely
a few years, due to internal differences. For example, the designer John Chris Jones
blamed the postulated approach of method-based designing for the fact that design
was regarded as a completely rational, objectifiable process and for obscuring the
question of the importance of intuition and creativity in design processes: ‘The lan-
guage used to describe designing became more and more abstract. The words lost
touch with how it feels to be a designer and how it feels to inhabit the systems be-
ing designed’.28 The synthesis of practice and theory of designing, which was sup-
posed to be implemented by the design methods movement, initially appeared to
have suffered a severe setback. In short, he criticised a demystification of designing
due to the forced systematisation and rationalisation of design practices.
Based on this criticism, which ultimately also was directed at the expertocracy
and scientification tendencies of the 1960s, practical models of design research
that manifest a close relation to the practical life-world of designers as well as a high
practical relevance have been favoured to this day. The project of design research is
‘about the active life of the contemporary human’, as summed up by Alain Findeli.29
In this respect, however, it is important to consider that the required practical rele-
vance – both in methodical and normative terms – could transform itself from a po-
tential of design research to its blind spot. From Clive Dilnot’s perspective, design
theory and research suffers not only from a resistance to academic culture, which
refuses to value design as an independent discipline and knowledge culture, but
also from the persistent opposition of design practitioners who want design to be
understood merely as that which designers do.30
With the research through design approach, a model was proclaimed at the be-
ginning of the 1990s, persisting to this day, which was supposed to take into account
the requirements of a design research that is practical, and preferably independent
from other academic disciplines. However, this model does not obtain its legitimi-
sation from a particularly differentiated perception of the relationship of practice
and theory, as the practice theories mentioned in the beginning suggest, for exam-
ple. On the contrary, it seems to obtain this legitimisation from a rather simplifying
comparison of design versus science, of practice versus theory, as already propagated
during the design methods movement. In his well-received text on research in art
and design, Christopher Frayling noted in 1993 that scientific research was com-
monly associated with ‘words rather than deeds’, while research in art and design
was ‘what artists, craftspeople and designers do all the time’, thus ‘deeds not words’.31
The emphasis made with this interpretation, one which design researchers (irre-
spective of Frayling’s intention) have in the past readily seized upon, is on the active
action potential of designing. This emphasis has been sometimes exaggerated and
idealised as a counterpart to the ‘analytical’ sciences’ supposed passivity and inca-
pacity to act, but it has, without doubt, also produced productive effects and results
in the area of practice-based design research.
However, an overly simplifying construction of design and science obscures
the fact that it is not only design research that derives its purpose and insights from
its practices; clearly, any research and knowledge production is based on a more or
less systematic set of material, technical, aesthetic and social practices. The merit
of the practice turn in the social and cultural sciences is precisely to identify this
field of practices and its far-reaching significance for social and cultural creation of
meaning. The practice-theoretical approaches of the practice turn offer differenti-
ated and productive models for practice-based design research in order to deal with
the question of the relationship between practice and theory in an appropriate com-
plexity and timeliness – without having to abandon the claim for practicality. The
other way round, the social and cultural sciences might benefit from the close rela-
tionship design researchers have established during the past years with the practi-
cal dimension of knowledge production and its societal contexts of application.
Looked at in that light, the assumed frontier between theory and practice is less an
ontological problem than a matter of an interdisciplinary knowledge production
and dissemination.

1 Elkins, J.: ‘A Glossary of Terms’, in Elkins, James (Ed.): Artists with PhDs. On the New Doctoral Degree in
Studio Art. Washington 2009, p. xvii f.
2 Cf.: Schatzki, T. R., Knorr Cetina, K., Savigny, E. von (Eds.): The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory,
London, 2001.
3 Latour, B., Woolgar, S.: Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton 1986. Knorr-
Cetina, K.: The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of
Science. Oxford 1981. Pickering, A. (Ed.): Science as Practice and Culture, Chicago, London 1992.
4 Bourdieu, P.: Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge and New York 2010 [1977]. Certeau, Michel de:
The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley 1988.
5 Schön, D.: The Reflective Practitioner. How Professionals Think in Action, New York 1983.
6 Cf.: Mareis, C.: ‘The Epistemology of the Unspoken: On the Concept of Tacit Knowledge within Contempo-
rary Design Research’, in Design Issues, 28/2, 2012, pp. 61–71.
7 Schatzki, T. R.: ‘Introduction. Practice theory’, in Schatzki, Theodore R.; Knorr Cetina, Karin; Savigny,
Eike von (Eds.): The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. London 2000, p. 2.
8 Reckwitz, A.: ‘Toward a Theory of Social Practices: A Development in Culturalist Theorizing’, in European
Journal of Social Theory 2002, 5/2, pp. 243–263, here p. 249.
9 Reckwitz, A.: Toward a Theory of Social Practices, p. 250.
10 Cross, N.: Designerly Ways of Knowing. London 2006, p. 9.
11 Law, J.: ‘Notizen zur Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie: Ordnung, Strategie und Heterogenität’, in Belliger,
Andréa; Krieger, David J. (Eds.): ANThology: Ein einführendes Handbuch zur Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie.
Bielefeld 2006, pp. 429–446, here p. 431.
12 Cf.: Latour, B.: Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford 2005.
13 Barad, K.: Agentieller Realismus. Berlin, Suhrkamp 2012.
14 Schatzki, T. R.: Introduction. Practice theory, p. 3.
15 Reckwitz, A.: Toward a Theory of Social Practices, p. 250.
16 Knorr Cetina, K.: Wissenskulturen. Ein Vergleich naturwissenschaftlicher Wissensformen, Frankfurt
a. Main 2002, p. 21f.
17 This section contains revised and extended passages from the essay: Mareis, Claudia: Eine multidiszi
plinäre Geschichte. Designforschung, Kreativitätstechniken und Methodenfragen, in Mareis, Claudia;
Windgätter, Christof (Eds.): Long Lost Friends. Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Design-, Medien- und
Wissenschaftsforschung. Zürich / Berlin: Diaphanes 2013, pp. 207–224.
18 Cf.: Gray, C.; Malins, J.: Visualizing Research: A Guide to the Research Process in Art and Design,
Aldershot 2004.
19 Schultheis, F.: ‘Disziplinierung des Designs’, in Michel, Ralf (Ed.): Forschungslandschaften im Umfeld
des Designs. Zürich 2005, pp. 65–84, here p. 72.
20 Galison, P.: ‘Aufbau / Bauhaus. Logical Positivism and Architectural Modernism’, in Critical Inquiry, 16/4,
1990, pp. 709–752.
21 Maldonado, T.; Bonsiepe, Gui: ‘Wissenschaft und Gestaltung’, in Zeitschrift ulm, 10/11, 1964, pp. 5–42.
22 Jones, J. Ch.: Design Methods: Seeds of Human Futures. London 1970.
23 Cross, N.: A History of Design Methodology, in Vries, Marc J. de; Cross, Nigel; Grant, Donald P. (Eds.):
Design Methodology and Relationships with Science. Dordrecht / Boston / London 1993, pp. 15–27,
here p. 18.
24 Gregory, S. A.: ‘Design and The Design Method’, in Gregory, Sydney A.: (Ed.): The Design Method. London
1966, pp. 3–10, here p. 6.
25 Aicher, O.: die welt als entwurf. Berlin 1991, p. 196.
26 Maser, S.: ‘Theorie ohne Praxis ist leer, Praxis ohne Theorie ist blind’, in Form. Issue 73, 1976, pp. 40–42,
here p. 42.
27 For a detailed analysis see: Mareis, Claudia: Design als Wissenskultur. Interferenzen zwischen
Design- und Wissensdiskursen seit 1960. Bielefeld 2011.
28 Jones, Design Methods, p. xi. Cf.: Jones, John Christopher: ‘How My Thoughts About Design Methods
Have Changed During the Years’, in Design Methods and Theories, 11/1, 1977, pp. 50–60.
29 Findeli, A.: ‘Die projektgeleitete Forschung: Eine Methode der Designforschung’, in Michel, R. (Ed.):
Erstes Design Forschungssymposium. Zürich 2004, pp. 40–51.
30 Dilnot, C.: ‘The State of Design History, Part I: Mapping the Field’, in Margolin, Victor (Ed.): Design
Discourse. History. Theory. Criticism. Chicago / London 1989, pp. 233–250, here p. 233.
31 Frayling, C.: Research in Art & Design. Research Papers 1/1. Royal College of Art London 1993/94,
pp. 1–5, here p. 1.
PROJECT-GROUNDED RESPONSES:
DESIGN / RESEARCH
What made the design practice in your PhD project qualify as research
practice – what did you do differently than if you would ‘just’ design?
Undertaking my PhD through practice-based research enabled the ability to con-

ceive and position the thinking, theorising and implementation of projects through
a series of themes leading to designed outcomes. Through developing ‘fields of en-
quiry’, practice-based research allows for the emergence of new modes leading to
the establishment of innovative design processes and methodologies in solving
issues of material thinking and production. This opportunity for design led exper-
imentation augments practice-based research informed through the tactile proce-
dures of design and making. Practice-based research differs greatly from profes-
sional designed work for it avails the constraints of delivering projects that rely on
existing processes of knowledge for their real-world implementation. Whilst prac-
tical knowledge is brought into practice-based research it nevertheless is ‘freed’
from the expectations of client and manufacturer. Research by practice offers the
foundations in which combinations of design innovation, material research and
making can begin a rethinking of how space and spaces, objects and technologies
can function differently and be more sustainable within our societies and urban
built environments.
Benedict Anderson, Professor of Spatial Design (University of Technology Sydney)

Dissertation: The Architectural Flaw, 2005. Royal Melbourne University of Technology (RMIT)
This question needs to be flipped, as it was the nature of research and knowledge
that was transformed through the lens of design practice rather than working to
qualify practice as research.
My design practice prior to undertaking a PhD was conducted as a mode of
enquiry regarding the concept of ‘interior’ through material, spatial and temporal
productions. The PhD was taken up as an opportunity to foreground this on-going
experimentation and to engage with a community of practice addressing design
and research. I think that it is important to note here that my PhD was through prac-
tice – design as a verb; i.e. designing and hence generated research through design-
ing. This has different nuances to ‘design’ as a noun and as noted below, I am not a
designer of artefacts.

The mode of PhD I enrolled in at RMIT was / still is one that emphasised the
PhD as part of one’s on-going practice – as situated in the practice. Thinking
through doing was valued. This did not require a separation from practice, as pro-
jects are already understood as laboratories for experimentation. However the PhD
became a critical space that enabled (demanded) a focus on research aspects of my
practice that otherwise get overshadowed in the midst of demands such as budgets,
deadlines and marketing.
Perhaps the question is better posed as: ‘what made your creative practice re-
search qualify as a PhD, i.e. a significant contribution to knowledge?’ This expecta-
tion required me to work through several concepts that are intricate to knowledge
and knowing, for example ‘context’ and the aim to fill gaps as a way of making a con-
tribution.
The effect of design as a discipline moving into areas of research and knowl-
edge heightens contemporary critiques of knowledge. Dominant concepts of know-
ing through research are based on a scientific paradigm and in particular an analyt-
ical model – an activity of self-knowing where cognition is foregrounded. In the
disciplines of interior design and art, where my research is situated, the idea of the
scientific paradigm that confirms the value of research as one of repetition by oth-
ers to achieve the same outcome is neither a useful measure nor orientation in at-
tending to subjectivities and production of the ‘new’. Hence many questions about
the definition of research and underpinning givens such as evidence, truth and
value needed to be rethought and transformed from assuming they ‘just’ are.
Suzie Attiwill, Deputy Dean, Learning & Teaching; Associate Professor of Interior Design (School of
rchitecture and Design, RMIT University, Melbourne)
A
Dissertation: ?interior, practices of interiorization, interior designs, 2012. School of Architecture and Design,
RMIT University
The simple answer is a shift in ‘purpose’ – why and where design happens. My BA
degree is in orthodox product design; my foundation and methods are therefore
based on the design of objects developed within the normative constraints of ma-
terials, manufacture and commerce etc. The purpose of these objects (and design)
being orientated towards the consumer in the context of everyday life.
My motivations shifted during an MA in Design Products at the Royal College
Art as I became more interested in questioning the systems and paradigms that di-
rect the design industry rather than simply becoming a part of it. The shift from de-
sign to design research did not happen overnight nor was it particularly conscious,
I simply embraced the opportunity, provided by an open-minded and revolutionary
course, to experiment with design practice and the purpose of its objects.
PROJECT-GROUNDED RESPONSES: D ESIGN / RESEARCH 043

Between completing my MA and beginning the PhD I was employed both as a
design researcher in academia and as a designer working for large corporate clients.
Whilst my approach remained relatively constant in these posts, the expectations
were completely different. In the commercial sector I found it virtually impossible
to be critical (the message has to be optimistic), or too conceptual (the market is ex-
tremely conservative). Essentially, for a number of reasons, there is little scope for
the designer to forge completely new paths, or to consider the implications of a
particular technology. My PhD began by examining these reasons, and the complex
systems that constrain and influence product (and technological evolution). The
practical element built on this to first explore new constraints and goals and then
develop products within and for them – the purpose being to question and expand
the role of design (and technology) rather than simply exploit it.
James Auger, Associate Professor (M-ITI)

Dissertation: Why Robot? Speculative design, the domestication of technology and the considered future,
2012. Royal College of Art
The design practice in my PhD thesis is qualified as scientific research due to its
systematic reflection from a feminist point of view. In this context, design is nei-
ther a service nor a production site of marketable products. It is regarded as so-
cio-political practice that currently produces results that are either gender stereo
type or gender blind. In order to establish a gender sensitive design research and
practice, I develop a design methodology that follows Donald Schön’s concept
of the ‘Reflective Practitioner’.1 Blaming scientific rationality for the serious di-
vorce between science and research on the one hand side and practice on the
other, he describes the relationship between theoretical knowledge and action in
professional practice as a ‘process of reflection-in-action’ where thinking and do-
ing are closely interlinked. He claims that this process is ‘central to the art’ by
which practitioners sometimes deal well with situations of uncertainty, instabil-
ity, uniqueness, value conflict’,2 that makes them to ‘researchers in the practice
context’.3 In this concept, research and practice are not separated spaces any
more. Consequently, the intention of my design methodology is to make design-
ers to power aware and gender sensitive practitioners in research as well as to
power critical and gender sensitised researchers in practice. In this context, the
design practice plays a double role: On the one hand I use the dimensions of hu-
man-centred design as basic reference points for my theoretical and methodolog-
ical reflections, interconnecting them with corresponding feminist epistemolo-
gies and gender theories. On the other hand, I use the design projects as case
studies to evaluate the whole process from information, ideation to use according
to feminist criteria like gender equality, social justice, empowerment and plural-
ity. Aiming at establishing design as a gender sensitive applied science or a gen-

der reflected scientific practice, doing design becomes inevitably a part of doing
gender research.
Sandra Buchmüller, Research Associate (University of Bremen)

Dissertation: Gender powers Design – Design powers Gender. A draft of a power critical and gender informed
design methodology (Original German Title: Geschlecht macht Gestaltung – Gestaltung macht Geschlecht.
Der Entwurf einer machtkritischen und geschlechterinformierten Designmethodologie), 2015. Berlin Univer-
sity of the Arts (UdK)
My PhD thesis explores the emergence of temporary urban interventions and prac-
tices, as the phenomenon of informal occupation of unused or neglected urban
space, as well as the implications that this process has on the urban structure in
which they take place. Within this topic I analyse relations between temporary ur-
ban interventions and the social, economic and political development of the area
in which they occur. My thesis focuses on the phenomenon of temporary urban in-
terventions as an instrument of informal planning in the context of managing the
city resources on a micro-scale. It is important to emphasise that this is a dynamic
field and not an instrument in the conventional sense of the word, and that these
types of interventions, see spatial resources as a testing ground for the reorganisa-
tion of the city at the micro-level. Also, they are explained as the direct practice of
civil society actors, who adopt new models of programming and spatial acting with
the aim of redefining the urban structure at micro-extent.
Temporary urban interventions encouraged by citizen participation emerged
as new kinds of local initiatives during the economic crisis, as modern, creative and
effective approaches to solving social, economic and spatial problems. I’m cur-
rently focusing on initiatives requiring space, as well as spaces that are desperately
empty. In 2013, my research project ‘The Map of Action’ showed that in the last few
years there was a marked rise in interest amongst civil initiatives in the local context
to put unused urban resources to work with the intention of participating in urban
development. Guided by the idea of the right to the city and taking the opportunity
to improve everyday life, they now employ short-term tactics to change conditions
of life in the city. The challenge lies in turning them into long-term strategies with-
out exploiting them for neo-liberal purposes.
The idea to do the PhD research about the informal occupation of urban
spaces came from the practice I’ve been using for years. I was struggling with link-
ing academic research and knowledge and my community activism. Academia pro-
vides access to information, and through participatory action research one can get
more information from ‘the field’ and get a better perspective on topics that should
be changed and improved. Also, participatory action research can be seen as a
method of direct education, by generating new knowledge from real-life experi-
ences. There is no need to see a contradiction in being politically active in solving a
problem while at the same time being scholarly engaged in researching that prob-
PROJECT-GROUNDED RESPONSES: D ESIGN / RESEARCH 045

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and to what value, I propose for the intended College.” Upon a
moderate computation, may it please your Grace, I believe its
present annual income, is between four and five hundred pounds
sterling. The house is surrounded with eighteen hundred acres of
land; a plan of which, and likewise of the house itself, I herein
inclose, and humbly present for your Grace’s inspection. The
number of negroes young and old, employed on various parts of
these lands, in sawing timber, raising rice for exportation, and corn
with all other kinds of provision for the family, is about thirty. Besides
these, the College will be immediately possessed of two thousand
acres of land near Altamaha, which were granted me by the
Governor and Council, when I was last at Georgia; and a thousand
acres more, left, as I am informed, by the late reverend and worthy
Mr. Zubberbuler. So that, by laying out only a thousand pounds in
purchasing an additional number of negroes, and allowing another
thousand for repairing the house, and building the two intended
wings, the present annual income may very easily and speedily be
augmented to a thousand pounds per annum. Out of this standing
fund, may be paid the salaries of the Master, professors, tutors, &c.
and also small exhibitions be allowed for some orphan or other poor
students, who may have their tutorage and room-rent gratis, and act
as servitors to those who enter commoners. What these salaries and
exhibitions ought to be, may at a proper season be submitted to your
Grace’s future consideration. At present, I would only further
propose, that the negroe children belonging to the College, shall be
instructed, in their intervals of labour, by one of the poorer students,
as is done now by one of the scholars in the present Orphan-house.
And I do not see why an additional provision may not likewise be
made for educating and maintaining a number of Indian children,
which, I imagine, may easily be procured from the Creeks,
Choctaws, Cherokees, and the other neighbouring nations. Hence
the whole will be a free-gift to the colony of Georgia: a complex
extensive charity be established; and at the same time, not a single
person obliged, by any public act of assembly, to pay an involuntary
forced tax towards the support of a seminary, from which many of
the more distant and poorer Colonist’s children cannot possibly
receive any immediate advantage; and yet the whole Colony, by the
christian and liberal education of a great number of its individuals, be
universally benefited. Thus have I most readily, and I humbly hope,
gratefully complied with your Grace’s desire, which to me is as a
command. I am constrained to trespass on your Grace’s patience,
whilst I congratulate your Grace on the goodness of God, who,
amongst many other signal marks of his peculiar providence, hath
honoured your Grace, in making you an happy instrument of
establishing two Northern-American Colleges; the one at New-York,
and the other at Philadelphia: and if (as I pray may be the case) your
Grace should yet be made further instrumental in establishing a third
College in the yet more southern, but now flourishing colony of
Georgia, I trust it will be an additional gem in the crown, which I
earnestly pray that God, the righteous judge, may give your Grace in
that day. In his great name, I beg leave to subscribe myself, may it
please your Grace,
Your Grace’s most dutiful, obliged son and servant,
G. W.
Mr. Whitefield to the Archbishop.
Tottenham-Court, September 1, 1767.
May it please your Grace,
A S I am going out of town for a few weeks, I beg leave humbly to

enquire, whether my L―― P――t hath considered the draught
of the charter sent him by your Grace some weeks ago. The
Governor, Council, Assembly, and other inhabitants of Georgia, wait
with impatience to have this affair brought to a desired issue; and
therefore I humbly hope your Grace will excuse the freedom of the
request now made by, may it please your Grace,
Your Grace’s most dutiful, obliged son and servant,
G. W.
The Archbishop to Mr. Whitefield,
Lambeth, September 18, 1767.
To the Reverend Mr. Whitefield.
T HE Archbishop of Canterbury sends Mr. Whitefield the enclosed

letter from the Lord President, which he received this day, and
which he desires may be returned to him.
Tottenham-Court, October 13, 1767.
B Y a series of unaccountable incidents and mistakes, your

Grace’s letter, with that of the L―― P――t, did not reach me
till this afternoon. I have made bold to copy the letter; and in
obedience to your Grace’s command, herewith return the original. Its
contents shall be immediately and duly considered, and an answer
very speedily remitted to your Grace. In the mean time, with most
humble thanks for the zeal and punctuality shewn by your Grace in
the prosecution of this important affair, and earnestly begging an
interest in your Grace’s prayers, that I may be kept from erring on
the right hand, or the left, in this final discharge of my public trust, I
beg leave to subscribe myself, may it please your Grace,
Your Grace’s most obedient and dutiful son and servant,
G. W.
Tottenham-Court, October 16, 1767.

A FTER earnest application to the Father of mercies for direction, I
have endeavoured as in his presence, duly to consider and
weigh the contents of the L―― P――t’s letter, which your Grace
was so condescending as to transmit for my perusal. His L――p
therein, is pleased to inform your Grace, “That he observes, that the
second draught of Mr. Whitefield’s charter, differs from that of New-
York; in not requiring the head of the College to be a member of the
church of England, which his Lordship thinks so material a
qualification, that for one, he should not be for dispensing with it. And
his L――p is also of opinion, that the public prayers should not be
extempore ones, but the liturgy of the church, or some part thereof,
or some other settled and established form.” Thus far his L――p.
And, as I profess myself to be a presbyter of the same communion
with his L――p, I cannot but applaud his L――p’s zeal for, and
watchfulness over, the honour of the established church. But if his
L――p would be so good as to take a particular view of the point of
light in which I stand, I cannot help flattering myself, but that his
L――p will be so far from thinking, that being a member of the
church of England is a qualification not to be dispensed with in the
head of the intended College; that on the contrary, it ought not so
much as to be mentioned, or insisted upon in the charter at all. For
not to trouble your Grace with a repetition of the reasons urged
against such a restraining clause, in my letter of June 17; I would
beg leave further to observe to your Grace, that by far the greatest
part of the Orphan-house collections and contributions came from
Dissenters, not only in New-England, New-York, Pensylvania, South-
Carolina, and Scotland, but in all probability here in England also.
Most of these places I have visited since the several audits of the
Orphan-house accompts, and acquainted with the design of turning it
into a College; and likewise the address of the Council and
Assembly of the province of Georgia, with his Excellency Governor
Wright’s answer, highly approving and recommending the design,
have been published. Being frequently asked, “Upon what bottom
the intended College was to be founded;” I not only most readily and
repeatedly answered, “Undoubtedly upon a broad bottom;” but
likewise, in most of the above-mentioned places, have solemnly
declared from the pulpit, that it should be upon a broad bottom, and
no other. This, I judged, I was sufficiently warranted to do, from the
known, long established, mild, and uncoercive genius of the English
government; also from your Grace’s moderation towards protestant
Dissenters; from the unconquerable attachment of the Americans to
toleration principles, as well as from the avowed habitual feelings
and sentiments of my own heart. This being the case, may it please
your Grace, I would humbly appeal to his L――p, whether I can
answer it to my God, my conscience, my king, my country, my
constituents, and Orphan-house benefactors and contributors, both
at home and abroad, to betray my trust, forfeit my word, act contrary
to my own convictions, and greatly retard and prejudice the growth
and progress of the intended institution, by narrowing its foundation,
and thereby letting it fall upon such a bottom, as I am persuaded will
give a general disgust, and most justly open the mouths of persons
of all denominations against me. This, as I acquainted your Grace, in
the same letter referred to above, is what I dare not do. And
therefore, as your Grace by your silence seems to be like-minded
with the L――d P――t; and as your Grace’s and his L――p’s
influence will undoubtedly extend itself to others of his Majesty’s
most Honourable Privy-Council, I would beg leave, after returning all
due acknowledgments, to inform your Grace, that I intend troubling
your Grace and his Lordship no more about this so long depending
concern. As it hath pleased the great Head of the church in some
degree to renew my bodily strength, I purpose now to renew my
feeble efforts, and turn the charity into a more generous, and
consequently into a more extensively useful channel. If I know any
thing of my own heart, I have no ambition to be looked upon at
present, or remembered for the future, as a founder of a college; but
I would fain, may it please your Grace, act the part of an honest
man, a disinterested minister of Jesus Christ, and a truly catholic,
moderate presbyter of the church of England. In this way, and in this
only, can I hope for a continued heart-felt enjoyment of that peace of
God, which passeth all understanding, whilst here on earth, and be
thereby prepared to stand with humble boldness before the awful,
impartial tribunal of the great Shepherd and Bishop of souls at the
great day. That your Grace may shine as a star of the first magnitude
in that day, is the sincere prayer of, may it please your Grace,
Your Grace’s most dutiful obliged son and servant,
G. W.
Tottenham-Court, November 11, 1767.
T HE bearer is my humble friend; one who hath been with me

several years, and been my companion in travel through the
continent of America. If your Grace would be so good as to send by
him the plans and papers relating to the Orphan-house, it would
much oblige, may it please your Grace,
Your Grace’s most dutiful humble servant,
G. W.
P. S. I know not whether your Grace or the Lord President hath

the copy of the New-Jersey College charter. I gave it to Mr. Secretary
Sharp, in order that your Grace and his Lordship might see it. Mr.
Sharp being dead, obliges me to trouble your Grace with this
particular: I should not otherwise have taken the freedom.
Tottenham-Court, February 12, 1768.
A S not only the Governor, Council and Assembly of Georgia, have

been for a long season, and are now waiting for an account of
what hath been done in respect to the affair of the intended
Bethesda college, I find myself under a necessity of giving them and
the contributors, on this, as well as the other side of the water, a
plain narration of the steps I have been taking; and at the same time
I intend to lay before the public a draught of the future plan, which,
God willing, I am now determined to prosecute. And as the letters
which I have had the honour of writing to your Grace, contain most of
what I have to say on this subject, I suppose your Grace can have
no objection against my publishing those letters, together with the
answers returned, and the issue of the correspondence. To prevent
your Grace’s having further trouble, as I hear your Grace is at
present much indisposed, I shall look upon silence as an
approbation, at least as a tacit allowance of what is designed by,
may it please your Grace,
Your Grace’s most dutiful son and servant, in the King of

kings and Lord of lords,
G. W.
Thus, may it please your excellency, concluded my

correspondence with his Grace, and I humbly hope, the province of
Georgia, in the end, will be no loser by this negociation. For, God
willing, I now purpose to add a public academy, to the Orphan-
house, as the college ¹ of Philadelphia was constituted a public
academy, as well as charitable school, for some time before its
present college charter was granted by the honourable proprietors of
Pensylvania in the year 1755.
¹ This college was originally built, above twenty-eight years

ago, for a charity school and preaching place for me, and
ministers of various denominations, on the bottom of the
doctrinal articles of the church of England. The trustees,
as a public and standing acknowledgment of this, have
inserted a clause in their Grant, for leave for a part of the
building still to be allowed for that purpose. Accordingly I
preached a sermon in it, for the benefit of their charity
children, when I was last at Philadelphia, before a very
large auditory, and Dr. Smith, the present Provost, read
prayers.
In pursuing a like plan, the present Georgia Orphan-house

estate, which for near these three years hath been in a state of
suspense, may be vigorously and properly improved, and thereby an
ample and lasting provision made for the future maintenance and
education of many poor, indigent, and orphan, as well as more
opulent students. Proper masters likewise may now be sent over to
instruct, and prepare for academical honours the many youths, who
are at this time both in Georgia and the adjacent provinces, waiting
for admission. In the mean time, a proper trust may be formed to act
after my decease, or even before, with this proviso, that no
opportunity shall be omitted of making fresh application for a college
charter, upon a broad bottom, whenever those in power shall think it
for the glory of God, and the interest of their king and country to
grant the same. And thus, may it please your Excellency, my beloved
Bethesda will not only be continued as a house of mercy for poor
orphans, but be confirmed as a seat and nursery of sound learning,
and religious education, I trust, to the latest posterity. That this may
be the happy case, as I am persuaded is the desire of your
Excellency, his Majesty’s Honourable Council, and house of
representatives, in the province of Georgia, so it shall still be, to my
latest breath, as it hath been for many years, the earnest endeavour
and incessant prayer of,
May it please your Excellency, Your Excellency’s, &c.
G. W.
Commons House of Assembly, Monday,

January 29, 1770.
M R. Speaker reported, that he with the house having waited on

the Reverend Mr. Whitefield, in consequence of his invitation,
at the Orphan-house academy, heard him preach a very suitable and
pious sermon on the occasion; and with great pleasure observed the
promising appearance of improvement towards the good purposes
intended, and the decency and propriety of behaviour of the several
residents there; and were sensibly affected, when they saw the
happy success which has attended Mr. Whitefield’s indefatigable
zeal for promoting the welfare of the province in general, and the
Orphan-house in particular.
Ordered, That this report be printed in the Gazette.
John Simpson, Clerk.
Extract from the Georgia Gazette.
Savannah, January 31, 1770.
L AST Sunday his Excellency the Governor, Council and Assembly,

having been invited by the Reverend Mr. George Whitefield,
attended at divine service in the chapel of the Orphan-house
academy, where prayers were read by the reverend Mr. Ellington,
and a very suitable sermon was preached by the reverend Mr.
Whitefield from Zechariah ivth chapter 9th. and part of the 10th
verses; “The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this
house, his hands shall also finish it; and thou shalt know, that the
Lord of hosts hath sent me unto you; for who hath despised the day
of small things?” to the general satisfaction of the auditory; in which
he took occasion to mention the many discouragements he met with,
well known to many there, in carrying on this institution for upwards
of thirty years past, and the present promising prospect of its future
and more extensive usefulness. After divine service, the company
were very politely entertained with a handsome and plentiful dinner;
and were greatly pleased to see the useful improvements made in
the house, the two additional wings for apartments for students, one-
hundred and fifty feet each in length, and other lesser buildings, in so
much forwardness, and the whole executed with taste and in a
masterly manner; and being sensible of the truly generous and
disinterested benefactions derived to the province through his
means, they expressed their gratitude in the most respectful terms.
Orphan-House, in Georgia, Dʳ. Orphan-House, in Georgia, Cʳ.
Sterling, Sterling,
l. s. d. l. s. d.
To cash received from By cash paid sundries
the 15th December, by particular
1738, to the 1st Jan. accompts
1745‒6, by public examined, from the
Collections, private 4982 12 8 15th December,
Benefactions, and 1738, to the 1st
5511 17 9¼
annual subscriptions, Jan. 1745‒6, for
per accompt buildings, cultivation
of lands, infirmary,
To ballance super- provisions, wearing
expended, Jan. 1, 529 05 1¼ apparel, and other
1745‒6. incident expences
£. 5511 17 9¼
SAVANNAH in GEORGIA.
S. L.
T HIS day personally appeared before us Henry Parker and
William Spencer, bailiffs of Savannah aforesaid, the
Reverend Mr. George Whitefield, and James Habersham,
Merchant of Savannah aforesaid, who, being duly sworn, say, That
the accompts relating to the Orphan-house, now exhibited before us,
of which the above is an abstract, amounting on the debit side
(namely, for collections and subscriptions received) to the sum of
four thousand nine hundred eighty-two pounds twelve shillings and
eight pence, sterling, and on the credit side, (namely, for
disbursements paid) to the sum of five thousand five hundred eleven
pounds seventeen shillings and ninepence farthing, sterling, do, to
the best of their knowledge, contain a just and true account of all the
monies collected by, or given to them, or any other, for the use and
benefit of the said house; and that the disbursements, amounting to
the sum aforesaid, have been faithfully applied to and for the use of
the same. And the Reverend Mr. Whitefield further declareth, that he
hath not converted or applied any part thereof to his own private use
and property, neither hath charged the said house with any of his
travelling, or any other private expences whatsoever.
George Whitefield,
James Habersham.
SAVANNAH in GEORGIA.
T HIS day personally appeared before us, Henry Parker, and

William Spencer, bailiffs of Savannah aforesaid, William
Woodrooffe, William Ewen, and William Russel of Savannah
aforesaid, who being duly sworn say, That they have carefully and
strictly examined all and singular the accompts relating to the
Orphan-house in Georgia, contained in forty-one pages, in a book
entitled, Receipts and disbursements for the Orphan-house in
Georgia, with the original bills, receipts, and other vouchers, from the
fifteenth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand
seven hundred and thirty eight, to the first day of January, in the year
of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and forty-five; and that the
monies received on account of the said Orphan-house, amounted to
the sum of four thousand nine hundred eighty-two pounds twelve
shillings and eight-pence, sterling, as above; and that it doth not
appear, that the Reverend Mr. Whitefield hath converted any part
thereof to his own private use and property, or charged the said
house with any of his travelling, or other private expences; but, on
the contrary, hath contributed to the said house many valuable
benefactions; and that the monies disbursed on account of the said
house, amounted to the sum of five thousand five hundred eleven
pounds seventeen shillings and ninepence farthing, sterling, as
above, which we, in justice to the Reverend Mr. Whitefield, and the
managers of the said house, do hereby declare, appear to us to be
faithfully and justly applied to and for the use and benefit of the said
house only.
William Woodrooffe,
William Ewen,
William Russel.
Sworn this 16th day of April, 1746, before us, bailiffs of

Savannah; in justification whereof we have hereunto fixed our hands,
and the common seal.
Henry Parker,
William Spencer.
General Accompt of Monies expended and received for the

Use of the Orphan-house in Georgia, from January 7th,
1738‒9, to February 9th, 1765.
Dʳ. Cʳ.
l. s. d. l. s. d.
1746, April 16.
To sundries
1746, April 16. By sundry
expended 5511 17 9¼ 4982 12 8
receipts per audit
as per audit
this day
1752, Feb. 25.
2026 13 7½ 1752, Feb. 25. By ditto 1386 8 7½
To ditto
1755, Feb. 19.
1966 18 2 1755, Feb. 19. By ditto 1289 2 3
To ditto
1765, Feb. 9.
3349 15 10 1765, Feb. 9. By ditto 3132 16 0¼
To ditto
10,790 19 6¾
By the Rev. Mr. Whitefield’s
benefactions, being the
sums expended more
than received, as
appears from the several
former audits, now
carefully examined,
viz. Folio 65 — 1169
10 1¼
Ditto 81 — 400
2064 5 10
5 4¾
Ditto 98 — 494
10 4
12,855 5 4¾ 12,855 5 4¾
Georgia ss.
BEFORE me, the Honourable Noble Jones, Esq.
senior, one of the assistant justices for the province
aforesaid, personally appeared the Reverend Mr. George
Whitefield and Thomas Dixon of the province aforesaid, who being
duly sworn, declare that the accompts relating to the Orphan-house,
from folio 82, to folio 98, in this book, amounting on the debit side to
three thousand three hundred and forty-nine pounds fifteen shillings
and ten pence, sterling, and on the credit side to three thousand one
hundred and thirty-two pounds sixteen shillings and one farthing,
sterling, contain, to the best of their knowledge, a just and true
account of all the monies collected by, or given to them, or any other,
for the use or benefit of the said house; and that the disbursements
amounting to the sum aforesaid, have been faithfully applied to and
for the use of the same.
Signed, George Whitefield,

Thos. Dixon.
February 9, 1765.
Sworn this 9th day of February, 1765, before me; in justification

whereof I have caused the seal of the general court to be affixed.
Signed N. Jones. Sealed.
Georgia ss.
B EFORE me, the Honourable Noble Jones, Esq.
senior, personally appeared James Edward Powell
and Grey Elliot, Esqrs. members of his Majesty’s
honourable council for the province aforesaid, who being duly sworn,
declare that they have carefully examined the accompts containing
the receipts and disbursements, for the use of the Orphan-house in
the said province, and that comparing them with the several
vouchers, they find the same not only just and true in every respect,
but kept in such a clear and regular manner, as does honour to the
managers of that house; and that on a careful examination of the
several former audits, it appears that the sum of two thousand and
sixty-four pounds, five shillings and ten pence, has at several times
been given by the Reverend Mr. George Whitefield for the use of the
said house; and that in the whole the sum of twelve thousand eight
hundred fifty-five pounds five shillings and four pence three farthings,
has been laid out for the same house since 7th January, 1738‒9, to
this day:—Also that it doth not appear that any charge has ever been
made by the said Reverend Mr. Whitefield, either for travelling
charges or any other expences whatever, and that no charge of
salary has been made for any person whatever, employed or
concerned in the management of the said house. February 9th,
1765.
Signed, James Edward Powell,

Grey Elliot.
Sworn this 9th day of February, 1765, before me; in justification

whereof, I have caused the seal of the general court to be affixed.
Signed N. Jones. Sealed.

Dʳ. Cʳ.
General Accompt of monies
expended for the Orphan-house, Monies received for the use of the
taken from the authentic book, same, taken from the authentic book,
from Dec. 1738, to February 1770. from Dec. 1738, to February 1770.
l. s. d. l. s. d.
1746 April 16. To By Benefactions and
Sundries, per 5511 17 9¼ Collections, in 4471 0 6¼
audit, this day, England
1752 Feb. 25 Dᵒ
2026 13 7½ Dᵒ ―― Scotland 978 2 5½
――
1755 Feb. 19 Dᵒ
1966 18 2 Dᵒ ―― Georgia 275 5 7¼
――
1765 Feb. 9 Dᵒ Dᵒ ―― Charles-
3349 15 10 567 1 9¾
―― Town
1770 Feb. 2 Dᵒ
2548 17 0½ Dᵒ ―― Beaufort 16 10 7
――
Dᵒ ―― Boston,
New-York, 1809 6 10½
Philad. &c.
Dᵒ ―― Lisbon 3 12 0
8120 19 10½
By cash, received for
payment of boarders
cocoons, rice, lumber, 3983 19 3
♦indigo, provisions,
&c.
By the Reverend Mr.
Whitefield’s
benefactions, being
the sums expended,
3299 3 3¾
more than received,
as appears by the
several audits,
carefully examined,
15404 2 5¼ 15404 2 5¼
♦ “indico” replaced with “indigo”
Georgia
B EFORE the Honourable Noble Jones, Esq. senior
assistant Justice for the province aforesaid, personally
appeared, the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield and Thomas
Dixon, of the province aforesaid, who being duly sworn, declare that
the accompts relating to the Orphan-house, from folio 101 to folio
109 in this book, amounting, on the debit side, to two thousand five
hundred forty-eight pounds seventeen shillings and one half-penny,
sterling, and on the credit side, to one thousand three hundred
thirteen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence three farthings,
sterling, contain, to the best of their knowledge, a just and true
account of all the monies collected by, or given to them, or any
others, for the use or benefit of the said house; and that the
disbursements, amounting to the sum aforesaid, have been faithfully
applied to and for the use of the same.
George Whitefield,
Thomas Dixon.
February 2, 1770.
Sworn this 2d day of February, 1770, before

me; in justification whereof I have caused
the seal of the general court to be affixed.
N. Jones. Seal.
5th and last audit, 1770.
Georgia.
B EFORE the Honourable Noble Jones, Esq. senior
assistant Justice, &c. personally appeared, James
Edward Powell and Grey Elliot, Esquires, members of his
Majesty’s council for the province aforesaid, who being duly sworn,
declare that they have carefully inspected and examined the
accompts, containing the receipts and disbursements, for the use of
the Orphan-house in the said province. And find the sums expended
for the use of the same, from the 9th February 1765, to this day,
amount to two thousand five hundred forty-eight pounds seventeen
shillings and one half-penny, sterling; and the sums received, to one
thousand three hundred thirteen pounds nineteen shillings and
sixpence three farthings, sterling; and that the whole of the sums
expended on account of the institution, amount to fifteen thousand
four hundred and four pounds two shillings and five-pence farthing,
sterling, and the whole receipts, to the sum of twelve thousand one
hundred four pounds nineteen shillings and one penny half-penny,
sterling; and the benefactions of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield
thereunto, have, at different times, amounted to the sum of three
thousand two hundred ninety-nine pounds three shillings and three-
pence three farthings, sterling, as clearly appears by a general
account thereof stated by us. And that in this our last, as well as
each preceding audit, no charge whatever has been made by the
Rev. Mr. Whitefield, either for travelling charges or otherwise, nor
any other charge for the salary of any person whatever, employed or
concerned in the management of the said Orphan-house; and that
clear and distinct vouchers for the whole amount of the sums
expended, have been laid before us, except for four articles,
amounting together to forty pounds one shilling and one penny,
being monies expended and paid by the said Mr. Whitefield on
several occasions, the particulars of which were laid before us, but
no receipt had been by him taken for the same.
James Edward Powell,

Grey Elliot.
February 2, 1770.
Sworn this 2d day of February, 1770, before

me; in justification whereof, I have caused
the seal of the general court to be affixed.
N. Jones. Seal.
Schedule of all the Lands possessed by, and belonging to the late
Reverend George Whitefield, in Georgia.
Lands granted by his Majesty to the late Reverend George

Whitefield, in trust for the Orphan-house, or for the endowment of
a College in Georgia.
A TRACT of 500 acres, called Bethesda, on which the Orphan-

house and additional buildings are erected.
Another of 419 acres, called Nazareth.
Another of 400 acres, called Ephrata, on which are the principal

planting improvements.
1319 acres.
These lands are granted in trust to the deceased, for the use of
the Orphan-house, and adjoin each other: the grants are dated 13th
of April, 1761.
Another of 500 acres, called Huntingdon, and adjoins on one

corner to Ephrata.—This grant is dated 13th of
April, 1761.
These 3 tracts, amounting to 2000 acres are

Another of 1000 contiguous, and are granted to the deceased in
Another of 500 trust for the endowment of a college. The grants
Another of 500 are dated 6th of August, 1765.
2000
Another of 1000 acres, left by the Reverend Bartholomew

Zouberbuhler, deceased, late minister of
Savannah, by Will, for the endowment of a
college, but conditionally.
The habendum of the three grants, amounting to 1319 acres of

land, for the use of the Orphan-house, run in the following words: “To
have and to hold the said tract of four hundred acres of land, and all
and singular other the premises hereby granted, with the
appurtenances, unto the said George Whitefield, his heirs and
assigns for ever, in free and common soccage:—In trust
nevertheless for the use and benefit of the Orphan-House,—he the
said George Whitefield, his heirs or assigns, yielding and paying,
&c.”
And the three grants, together amounting to 2000 acres of land,

for the endowment of a college, are thus expressed: “To have and to
hold the said tract of one thousand acres of land, and all and
singular other the premises hereby granted, with the appurtenances,
unto the said George Whitefield, his heirs and assigns for ever, in
free and common soccage: In trust for the endowment of a college in
our said province,—he the said George Whitefield, his heirs and
assigns, yielding and paying, &c.”
So that it plainly appears, these lands cannot be aliened or

appropriated to any other use, than the purposes for which they were
granted.
Extract from an account of the state of the family at the
Orphan-house in April 1770.
Whites.
Managers
and 9
carpenters
Boys 15
Girl 1
Negroes.
Of which 16 are young, and fit for any labor; 7 are old, but
Men 24
capable of some service, and 1 so old as to be useless.
8 of these are capable of the usual labor, 2 are old and assist
Women 11 in the business of the house, and 1 almost incapable of
any service.
Of whom, those that are capable are employed about
Children 15 something useful, as far as their strength and abilities will
permit.
75
By an authentic account of the state of the family at the Orphan-

house, from the year 1739 to 1770,
have been clothed, educated, maintained and suitably

140 Boys provided for.
43 Girls
183 Total.
N. B. The Spanish war; the fluctuating state of the colony for

years; the long suspense in which Mr. Whitefield was kept by
government at home, as to his intended plan of improvement at the
Orphan-house; and other particulars which are noticed, and may be
observed in his letters, prevented the accession of a greater number
of orphans; but to the honour and usefulness of the institution, it
ought to be remarked, that many poor children, besides what are
numbered in this list, were occasionally received, educated, and
maintained at the Orphan-house.

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THE RESOURCEFUL SOCIAL EXPERT: DEFINING THE FUTURE CRAFT OF DESIGN R

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