SCHOLARLY DESIGN?

Upon entering the School of Engineering from the practice-based Faculty of Fine Arts questions arose regarding the pedagogy of design theory versus the design work of first year engineering students. Fine Arts, in the past couple of years, has tried to enter higher levels of academia by starting to offer PhD programs that are practice-based. Often times these degrees have an aspect of theorizing practice into analysis and thereby equate the process of creating art to the process of scientific experimentation. If one looks at the area of scientific inquiry, which is according to Heidegger: ‘nothing less than the making secure of methodology over what ever is (nature and history)’, questions arise over whether theorizing practice into analysis is the right approach. By doing the latter, one calls into question whether practice by itself is valid and whether by creating a (somewhat) artificial analysis one diminishes the process of practice to a secondary activity. This paper will start by looking at research done in the area of Fine Arts to solve the ‘theorizing practice into analysis’ question by creating a situation where practice can be considered as more than mere experimentation. In addition there will be a discussion as to how these findings might be applied to Engineering Design.