Speculative Gameboarding for Megaregions: Using Morphological Themes for a Pedagogical Approach to Regional Design in the Greater Bay Area, China

The unprecedented speed and scale of urbanization in China calls for advanced planning and design strategies. This paper aims to explore a new pedagogical approach that cultivates morphological regional design studies to develop spatial strategies that acknowledge the complex and diverse urban landscapes of Chinese megaregions. Accordingly, the...

Cards for Circularity (CFC): Reflections on the use of a card-based circular design tool in design education

The transition to a Circular Economy (CE) requires designers to, more than ever, concurrently develop a circular design, supply chain and business model, and anticipate how products and buildings function over time. To address these challenges, recent studies identified specific knowledge and competencies for designers. However, it remains...

Making the design process in design education explicit: two exploratory case studies

The aim of design education is that students learn to think and act like designers. However, the focus in the design studio is mainly on the design product, whereas the ‘why and how’ of the design process are barely addressed. A risk of learning by performing real-life tasks without addressing the skills involved, that is, without receiving...

Sustainable Design Education – An Evaluation of an International Student Design Workshop in Hanoi, Vietnam

Green Architecture for Sustainable Communities (GASC) was a joint event organised by Dutch and Vietnamese universities with the aim of boosting sustainable development in the built environment of Vietnam. As a key activity of the event, the international student design workshop focused on renovation of typical Vietnamese row houses – aiming...

Circular economy competencies for design

This study addresses what competencies (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) designers need in order to successfully design products and services for a circular economy. Existing literature, though sparse, has identified a number of circular economy competencies for design. Yet, a coherent overview is lacking. To complement the competencies found...

From bauhaus to design thinking and beyond: a comparison of two design educational schools

This paper compares two pioneering design educational approaches: the historic Bauhaus school founded in 1919 in Germany, and contemporary design thinking education, based on the example of the HPI School of Design Thinking. We compare both approaches according to six emerging categories: (1) curriculum, (2) multi-disciplinarity, (3) mind-set...

The tacit design process in architectural design education

The purpose of the architectural design studio is that students learn to think and act like designers. However, communication between teachers and students seems to be problem- atic. Teachers barely seem to explain how designers work, which may be confusing for stu- dents. To learn professional reasoning processes and strategies, different...

Challenges for design researchers in healthcare

Design research in healthcare can be demanding. We report on eight challenges that designers and design researchers face when working on healthcare projects. We conducted four workshops with design researchers active in healthcare: six PhD candidates, a mixed group of thirteen design researchers, twelve design students, and eight design...

Found in translation: Bringing reversal theory to design for play

In the design of objects for children’s play, support from psychology is often sought in general developmental overviews, typologies of play, and age-related performance and preference descriptions. These sources may give an insight into global aspects of child development but have limited utility for understanding the situated motivations of an...

Touching Materials Visually: About the Dominance of Vision in Building Material Assessment

Designers’ visual way of knowing and working tends to be highly valued in design research. In architecture such an approach is increasingly criticized. Since people experience buildings with all their senses, architects’ visual focus is said to the run the risk of disregarding non-visual aspects. This study focuses on the visual and tactile...

Making explicit in design education: Generic elements in the design process

In general, designing is conceived as a complex, personal, creative and open-ended skill. Performing a well-developed skill is mainly an implicit activity. In teaching, however, it is essential to make explicit. Learning a complex skill like designing is a matter of doing and becoming aware how to do it. For teachers and students therefore, it...