Green2 recently published an article on design research by Michal. The article starts with examples of design research seen as an activity of studying designers to learn what designing actually is. Donald Schon’s book “The Reflective Practitioner” is often one of the core references in such research. The article discusses Abel Maciel’s engineering doctorate at UCL.

It later moves on to studies of innovative materials. Sarat Babu’s research into heterogeneous composites manufactured with 3d printing at UCL, serves as one example and Aurelie Mosse’s research into adaptive fabrics at CITA in Copenhagen is another.

Last category is a research into design tools. Computational tools in particular tend to present a wide range of potential research questions. Two agendas are discussed: Daniel Davis at SIAL in Melbourne is attempting to make parametric modeling even more flexible by substituting the typical, hierarchical, tree-like logic with declarative programming. Iwona Grabska at Jagiellonian University in Cracow is approaching the question of tools from a different angle, as she develops a software for simulating pedestrian flow within buildings based on CAD models.

MicroKinetics by Sarat Babu (UCL, RCA).

Ice-fern by Aurelie Mosse and Mette Ramsgaard Thomsen (CITA).