Category: Design research
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Faith buildings and local communities
What is the role of faith buildings in today’s society and how can historic faith buildings be revitalised and re-energised by connecting with their local communities? This is a question we have been exploring for almost 5 years now as part of Empowering Design Practices and in this time we have found many examples of […]
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Fostering Sustainable Practices in Fashion
Finally, sustainability in fashion is being noticed. The fast fashion of the last decades has given us cheap clothes of often doubtful quality, which is fast bought and fast disposed. The cheap clothes is often produced in low wage countries and shipped half across the world just to end up in landfill in Europe and […]
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Engaging children in design
As part of a research project that aims to explore the processes of empowering people to design (www.empoweringdesign.net), the research team has occasionally explored different ways for engaging the children of participating families in the design of community spaces. This typically occurs in workshops and open day events where children of adult participants engage in […]
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PhD opportunities through the Energy DTA
OU Energy research opportunities through the Alliance DTA3 PhD Fellowship Programme. The Open University (OU) is a partner on the successful bid for the ‘Extended University Alliance Doctoral Training Alliances (DTA) in Energy, Applied Biosciences for Health and Social Policy called The DTA3 COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie PhD Fellowship Programme. This is funded under the Horizon […]
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What’s new in aircraft design?
This week I attended the Royal Aeronautical Society 6th Aircraft Structural Design conference (https://www.aerosociety.com/events-calendar/6th-aircraft-structural-design-conference/) hosted at ‘We the Curious’ in Bristol. The conference aimed to address the challenges faced by designers of next generation aircraft, including environmental constraints, advanced manufacturing and materials as well as new design approaches. Smart and efficient mobility with reduced environmental impact […]
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Envisioning Futures of Design Education
Do you know how design should be taught in the future? Our recent paper in the journal Dialectic reports on a workshop we held with a group 6 design educators and 40 international participants to explore the future of design education. To spark off the discussion, the 6 design educators presented 4 provocative future […]
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PhD Fellowship Opportunities at the Energy DTA
Energy research opportunities at The Open University (OU) through the DTA3 COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie PhD Fellowship Programme. The OU is a partner on the successful bid for the ‘Extended University Alliance Doctoral Training Alliances (DTA) in Energy, Applied Biosciences for Health and Social Policy called The DTA3 COFUND Marie Skłodowska-Curie PhD Fellowship Programme. This is […]
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Design Star Methods Day
For the last two years we’ve hosted a research methods day for the AHRC funded Centre for Doctoral Training ‘Design Star‘. This year we focused on exploring the relationship between ontologies, epistemologies and methodologies in our own research … through the making of personal ‘thinking positions’ pyramids and placing them on a landscape describing different paradigms of approaching research, […]
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‘It’s OK, to want to be ordinary…’
Recently one of my colleagues, for the purposes of this blog let’s call her Helen, is nearing two notable landmarks in her life. One is her fortieth birthday and the second is her final ophthalmic consultation to register her as blind. For most of her life, Helen has been visually impaired, but she then became […]
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Memories of Lionel March (1934 – 2018)
Memories from friend and former-student, Chris Earl: Lionel March was a scholar and artist. He inspired generations of students and colleagues to combine the formal and the creative in planning and design. His contributions to theory and practice ranged from mathematics to painting, from computation to stage set design, from architectural history to architectural practice […]