The first Research and Education in Design Conference was held at the Lisbon School of Architecture – Universidade de Lisboa between 13 and 15 of November 2019.
The programme included 8 paper presentation sessions:
A – Design & Pedagogy
B – Design Studio
C – Visual Design Representations
D – Research in Design
E – Design Thinking
F – Beyond the Classroom
G – Design & Society
H – Community-based Research
The conference began with a seminar on design research and a talk by Professor John Gero. There were three keynote talks by renowned scholars Ken Friedman, Barbara Tversky, and Gabriela Goldschmidt, and the conference ended with a debate between Bernhard Bürdek and John Gero moderated by José Rui Marcelino.
There was an atmosphere of lively exchange of ideas between the conference delegates and keynotes with several impromptu conversations building up on the session’s insightful Q&As; and the keynote talks challenged everyone to reflect on the future of Design in an increasingly complex and global world.
Overall, the conference was an inspirational event, and we hope to build on the insights to improve design’s educational practices and research.
Publications
The conference proceedings were published by Taylor & Francis, and the book of abstracts can be downloaded here. You can also watch the three conference keynote talks below.
Barbara Tversky
Professor of Psychology Emerita, Stanford University and Professor of Psychology,
Columbia Teachers College
She was born a contrarian and early on began studying how people think about the various spaces they inhabit because the presumption at the time was that language was the foundation of thought. She extended this to the study of the spaces people create to extend their minds, to augment thought, to communicate, and to improve their lives, including gestures, depictions, diagrams, comics, sketches, and arrangements of the world, eventually showing, that spatial thinking is the foundation of thought. The foundation, not the entire edifice. Some of this appears in her 2019 book, Mind in Motion: How Action Shapes Thought, Basic Books.
Gabriela Goldschmidt
Graduate of the School of Architecture
at Yale University
She worked as a practicing architect in the USA and Israel and had her own practice in Haifa until the mid-1980s, at which time she joined the Technion in a full-time capacity. Since the end of 2010 she is a professor emeritus. She taught a large number of design studios and theoretical seminars that reflect her research interests: design cognition, visual thinking and sketching, analogy, and design education. She served as a visiting professor or visiting scholar at MIT, Stanford, TUDelft, the University of Montreal, UNIST, and Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. Her publications include dozens of refereed journal papers, book chapters, papers in conference proceedings, and two books: an edited volume (with Prof. William Porter of MIT), Design representation (Springer 2004), and Linkography: Unfolding the design process (MIT Press 2014). She continues to lecture around the world and supervise PhD students at the Technion.
Ken Friedman
Chair Professor in Design Innovation Studies
at Tongji University in Shanghai, China, and the inaugural Esteemed Scholar of the Ullman School of Design at the University of Cincinnati
Friedman is editor-in-chief of She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, and co-editor of Design Theory, Design Thinking, a book series at The MIT Press. He served as Dean of the Faculty of Design at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, where he is now Professor Emeritus. Friedman is also a member of one of the most celebrated creative movements of the 20th century, Fluxus – an international experimental laboratory for art, design, architecture, and music. Friedman joined Fluxus in 1966 as the youngest member of the Fluxus group. He worked closely with other Fluxus artists and composers such as Dick Higgins, George Maciunas, and Nam June Paik. Friedman’s work can be found in major museums and galleries around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Guggenheim Museum, the Hood Museum of Art, and the Tate Gallery. His work has been exhibited at the Royal Academy in London, the Biennale of Venice, and the Whitney Museum, among others.
Conference chair
Rita Almendra
Designer and an Associate Professor with Aggregation at the Faculty of Architecture ULisbon
She is the director of the Design Department, coordinator of CIAUD’s Design group and member of the Scientific Council of FA ULisbon. She has an MBA in management with a marketing specialization from the FCEE at Catholic University of Lisbon. Her Master in Design Management was supervised by Prof. Charles Waldman from INSEAD. She lectures at the Under graduation, Master and PhD Programs several courses in the areas of Theory and Critics, Design Studio, Sustainable Design and Design Management. She supervised more than 60 master dissertations and 20 PhD Thesis with topics related with her research interest that are the ones of: Design Education and Research, Social Design, Design for Sustainability and Inclusion; Design Cognition, Design Management. Rita published more than 70 papers and several book chapters.
Hours in two incredible days
Keynote speakers
Participants
Staff and volunteers
