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Description: | Education Disciplines before data by Lord Llewelyn Davies The annual design oration to the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers, devoted on this occasion to the education of designers, was given at the Royal -Society of Arts last December by Lord Llewelyn Davies. The speaker, who is head of the School of Architecture at University College, London, based his arguments on his own experience in architectural education, but his fundamental contentions apply to all branches of design education. His advocacy of disciplines rather than data and his belief that a student should not be committed to a single profession are of central importance to design educational theory. A shortened version of the oration is reproduced here. The title of this oration, Education of Designers, embodies an assumption: that designers need to be educated. I think they do; the tasks of a professional designer can only be met by a man who has been educated, and not just trained. You can be trained as a machine-gunner, or a draughtsman. Education is a deeper and broader preparation, needed for men who are to undertake complex and responsible roles in society. I don't think many will disagree with this assumption, but I believe that the full implications for design education following from it are not fully recognised as yet. I propose to give you some account of our present practice and ideas in architectural education, particularly/hat part of it which deals with the development of design skills. I will auemptto discuss the relevance of our experience to the problems you are facing in the education of designers, particularly industrial designers. Likethe manufacturing industry, the building industry and the architectural profession relied in the past on the apprenticeship system to recruit their leaders. Unlike manufacturing industry, design and production in the building industry are divorced. Design is in the hands of the design profession - the architects - and production in the hands of contractors. Nowadays, when entry to university is available to any boy of talent and application, any profession which permits entry at a level below that of university courses is liable to get the rejects. Whether or not you may think that for the purposes of your own profession you really need to have two A levels or three A levels, or any other specified level of school achievement, if you set it below the standard of entry to universities you are going to get the less bright children coming into your profession. At the Oxford conference, the architectural profession decided then and there that they would set the limit for entry to the profession at the same level as entry to university. In making this change in the requirements for entry into architecture we had to face considerable opposition from older members of our profession who believed that very many talented architects would not be able to get two A levels, and that by requiring this standard we were going to deprive the profession of some of its most brilliant future ornaments. I believe this to be nonsense. It may be true that very great designers or architects did not in the past have two A levels, but I am sure that if they had wanted to have two A levels in order to be architects or designers they would jolly well have got them - it would have cost them no trouble at all. The second major decision taken at the Oxford conference was to move architectural education gradually out of colleges of art and technical colleges into universities and institutions of university status. It seems clear that future architects will befaced with complex and responsible tasks for which a broad education is absolutely essential. Colleges of art and technical colleges can give effective training and are a great improvement on apprenticeship but they cannot, in their very nature, give a broadly based education. Education is moving so fast today that any profession needs to heed the words of the Red Queen: "If you want to stay in the same place here, you have to run". But it is one thing to say that a broad education is needed, and quite another to say what sort of education is appropriate for designers. We don't know the answers to this - but at least in University College we are trying to find out. Thanks to a generous grant from the Leverhulme Trust, we have a research team studying education for design, led by Dr Jane Abercrombie, whose work is probably well known to many of you. I am going to draw heavily on Dr Abercrombie's research in talking to you here tonight*. Continuous process First let us look at the shape of the educational process as a whole. Education for a profession can be thought of as a continuous process passing through three principal stages. First, there is an undergraduate period - usually three years - taken immediately after leaving school (this corresponds roughly to the DipAD). This period will usually be largely devoted to the basic, fundamental subjects underlying the practice of the profession. Second, for many professions, wilI come a period of one or two years' postgraduate study - devoted to more applied work - which is a period of professional training rather than education. Finally, there will often be a required period of supervised work in practice, working under people already fully qualified. This is usually one or two years. There is nothing sacrosanct about this order of events, and the various elements can be taken in a different sequence. But it is convenient to discuss the educational process section by section before we put it back together again. * The Nature and Nurture of Architects, by Dr M. J. Abercrombie, published by the Trans Bartlett Society U. G., 1964. (caption) Lord Llewelyn Davies has been Professor of Architecture in the University of London since 1960, and is a member of the RIBA board of Architectural Education. He has been closely associated with much of the recent work on hospital design, and has acted as consultant architect for many new hospitals in this country and abroad. His own buildings (with J. R. Weeks) include the new village at Rushbrooke, Suffolk, new hospitals at Greenock and Be/fast, and the Nuffield diagnostic centre and maternity hospital at Corby. He is a joint author of Studies in the Function and Design of Hospitals (1955), and The Design of Research Laboratories (1960). The first three years raise the mostserious problems,and success or failure of the system at this stage is critical. It will very likely make or mar the student. There are three main topics to discuss: selection for entry, the knowledge to be taught, and - most important of all - the means whereby students are helped to develop those personal powers, attitudes and skills which will make them effective as designers. Selection of a few students for admission from hundreds who want to come is a phenomenon of today which I detest and which will slowly disappear as the Robbins expansion of education takes place. For the time being, however, we have to select, and therefore we have a duty to select as wisely and as fairly as possible. Our search for bother means of selection has at least had interesting by-products because it has forced us to ask these questions: what sort of person are we looking for ? What is an architect like ? Is a future designer distinguishable from other people ? Is deliberate selection any better than picking names from a list with a pin ? What sort of person are we looking for ? The stock answer is: someone who is creative. But what does this mean ? And how do you find him ? Two American educational psychologists- Getzels and Jackson - have given some answers*. Their research suggests that it is possible to distinguish between high intelligence and high creativity. They define high intelligence as the ability to do very well in intelligence tests and in most conventional examinations where each question has only one correct answer. High creativity they define as the ability to produce original, fanciful and even fantastic responses to a series of special tests, mainly devised by themselves. One such test was to give each student a blank sheet of paper and ask him to make a drawing inspired by the theme Playing in the school playground. Children in the high intelligence group generally drew fairly good' straight pictures showing children playing. Children in the high creativity group often did off-beat drawings. One, for example, returned a blank sheet entitled "Children playing in the school playground during a snow-storm". Taken as a whole, the research showed that there was an identifiable group of high creatives, who differed from those with the highest intelligence as measured by IQ tests. An amusing sidelight was that the high creatives did much better in their exams than their IQ results seemed to warrant and in several cases they were sent to see the school psychiatrist, as suffering from 'over-achievement'. Creativity and intelligence, by Getzels and Jackson, published by Wily (New York) 1962. So far so good - it is clear that we should look for high creativeness, and we may be able to distinguish it by tests. But this does not get us very far, as high creativeness is of value not only to designers, but in most other walks of life as well. Scientists, writers, administrators, indeed practically everyone, will look for creative people. At University College we are engaged on a long term study of our students. At entry, we select them first on a rather broad assessment of their school history including examination results, headmaster's letter and a written statement by the student himself. This gives US a group over twice as large as the number of places we have to offer. This group is then invited to spend a day at the School of Architecture, where they are looked after socially by the first year students and interviewed by several members of staff, separately. At the end of the day the interviewing staff meet under my chairmanship, and compare notes and agree final grading for all the students seen that day usually eight in number. We also meet each student for a final talk. During the day they also take a battery of psychological tests, mainly designed to seek out visual skills and power to conceive and manipulate space. We do not use these tests in awarding places, but we record the results. Over a period of years we will compare each student's progress as a designer with his test scores at entry. Maybe something will come of this - but I and my colleagues at University College are rather sceptical. If I must guess at the result of these researches, it would be that we wilI grow better at making broad judgements of future potential in students - but that we shall not tee able to predict very much in detail as to their individual skills or achievements. For design education this result would have important consequences. It would mean that out of the students entering a design course only some, perhaps a minority, would prove to have the necessary qualities to be designers. The others would be able, competent and educated, but where would they go ? To say that they should become teachers of design is clearly not the answer. This question is now under general discussion in all fields of professional education, and some conclusions have already been reached. It seems wrong to force boys and girls at school to choose a professional career, such as architecture or industrial design, or even medicine. At that age they can have little insight into what such careers entail and we will most likely be unable to judge their aptitudes. Instead, they should begin higher education by taking courses broad enough to give a choice of career in life. After one or two years in higher education their interest and talents will be easier to identify, and they can focus on subjects leading to a defined career. The universities are now moving toward the establishment of such courses.For example, at University College we are broadening the first degree course in architecture so that it can lead to alternative careers in the building industry, in planning and in research. This will mean that students entering the course are not committed to becoming either architects or failed architects. Instead, only those with design aptitudes and interests need become architects. Others with interests and skills in management technology, production, etc. can diverge into careers in industry, research or planning. We have received tremendous encouragement from the building industry in this move. Contractors are already providing special courses for our students and we are in discussion with the London Master Builders Association with regard to the establishment at University College of a chair of building, within the department of architecture. Similar plans are being considered by some medical schools, whereby potential doctors can enter courses with alternative career choices open to them. There are obvious parallels between these ideas and those now under consideration for industrial design in engineering. What should be taught? Discussion of the criteria for entry has already led me into the second topic:theknowledge to be taught during the first phase of higher education. We have just seen that the first courses should be broad enough to give entry to a range of careers, preferably not all in design, for which some students may prove to be unfitted. There is another reason why these courses should not be too narrowly technical or professional. Today, in any field of design, the range of technical knowledge which the designer should have at his command is tremendous. Knowledge is also continually expanding and changing. So it is impossible to teach technical know-how effectively in a school of design. Anything that is taught may be out of date by the time the student is in a position to use it. Instead, teaching must be directed towards the scientific basis on which technology is founded. This can give the student a command of the field of knowledge and ability and confidence to learn what he needs of applied technology as and when he needs to use it. This lesson was learnt many years ago by engineers. When I studied engineering at Cambridge, in 1933, my course consisted almost entirely of applied mathematics and physics, on which engineering science rests. Architects took longer to see the red light, and in many schools hapless students are still laboriously learning the details of a long-dead technology and design rules from a long-dead aesthetic. But we are now changing this. We are trying to determine what are the necessary basic subjects that will give an architect the best intellectual armoury when he comes to design. These are hotly debated, as I know they are also for industrial designers. i myself put mathematics in first place, in the teeth of many of my colleagues. I believe that mathematics is once again coming back as the central discipline in design, as it has been in many previous periods. I think that mathematical concepts and mathematical tools, including of course the computer, are going to be essential for the solution of very many design problems in the immediate future. I also believe that mathematical tools are an aid and not a hindrance to creative design. The scientific study of the human being is an essential discipline for many designers. This means that he must learn some anatomy, physiology and psychology, and also some social science as a basis for management and team work. All these subjects are already an established part of the architectural curriculum at University College. These subjects form a basis for functional design. Other basic subjects, including applied physics and engineering theory, provide a basis for design in terms of materials and productive process. Designers' cradle But there is a serious snag, and this leads to the third and most important topic: how do we provide the right environment for the nurture of designers ? The change towards basic, fundamental ingredients in the curriculum which is in itself right and inevitable can lead to grave difficulties. It has perhaps done so in the case of engineering. G. S. Bosworth of the English Electric Co gave the following evidence to the Feilden committee on engineering design: "Industry has reacted to these two trends by dividing the design function into at least two parts; one of these concerns itself with the scientific aspects of design . . . leading to the specification of limits which must be observed, but seldom defining how they are to be contained; the other concerns itself with depicting the shapes of the components within these limits. The first infrequently designated as an engineering department, the second as a design or drawing office.. The manufacturing aspect of design - especially in large organisations - is frequently imposed subsequently by production engineers who modify drawings and other forms of information to meet their requirements. Thus, the design process has changed from an individual to a very loosely co - ordinated team activity in which most of the able people are concerned with the sewing of particular limits and not with the creative process of deciding the best final form of the finished product . . .". This difficulty is much discussed; it is the problem of analysis versus synthesis. It is generally supposed in academic education that it is easier to teach analysis than to teach synthesis, and theta student must learn to analyse before he can synthesise. These twin, deeply rooted fallacies are the reason why conventional British teaching is often destructive of design talent. Traditionally, schools of architecture and schools of design have escaped from this problem -the architects by setting studio problems, and the design schools by relying on heavy doses of fine art. These time - honoured methods have done good service, but they are breaking down today. Increasingly, students cannot find the bridge between the theoretical, analytical part of their course - which is nowadays inevitably further from practice than the workshop wrinkles of older days - and the 'art' or 'design' exercises they are asked to perform. Dr Abercrombie's main concern is to study this question. She has pointed out that in children the development of synthetic and analytic skills are not sequential but simultaneous. Thus the educational system should expose the design student to a series of exercises in synthesis which are scaled to what he can accomplish at each stage. Dr Abercrombie has put forward detailed arguments and proposals for this in the paper referred to earlier. Such exercises can and should be based on the subjects and material from the lecture courses - they should not be projects unconnected with the intellectual elements in the teaching. If they are unrelated, as many architectural school projects are (and as I suspect much fine art is in schools of design), then sooner or later the student will reject one or other part of the course; he will either reject knowledge as a basis for design or find himself so tied down to an analytic approach that he can never bring himself to make a design decision. I have seen both these opposite and equally disastrous results in recent years. Case studies But arranging for exercises in synthesis will not be enough. The time scale will not permit all the aspects of design to be covered in exercises, and the lecture course will inevitably outrun studio work. Therefore we need to display to students the whole of the activity for which they are being educated. We do this in University College by arranging a series of case studies to be shown to students at the beginning of their course. These are full, factual accounts of how recent buildings were actually designed and built. Many design topics are raised in these case studies but none are fully pursued. instead, it is explained to the students that they are seeing an icefield; only the tops of the icebergs are on view - the remaining seven-eighths are submerged and will gradually come into view as the course proceeds. Something like this helps the students to see the point of instruction and exercises, which otherwise might have no visible connection with his future tasks as a designer. Here we have come back to the general shape of the course, the sequence of experiences which I spoke of earlier. What I have just said amounts to a proposal to inject some element of practical experience into the earliest part of the students' course. Some people advocate a year of practical experience at the very beginning, while others favour sandwich courses in which periods at the school or university are interleaved with periods in practice. Probably there are several possible sequences, and the same arrangement will not fit every school or every student. I would make two points here. First, a student fresh from the sixth form finds it much easier to learn basic scientific subjects than he does later on - so the fundamental part of the course should come as early as possible. Second, 'practical experience' can mean anything or nothing. It can, if carefully organised and properly phased in relation to the total course, be magnificent; but if not, it can be a dispiriting waste of time. Further, it should be remembered that at the beginning of the course students should, as a rule, be put into a practical situation to observe and record practice, not to participate in it. Later on, they can and should participate. Lastly, there is the question of post-graduate courses. At present these are usually seen as following on the Diploma in Art and Design. But they could take another form. Students could enter such courses after taking a degree in architecture or in engineering. I believe that there would be a useful number of students who might switch from architecture to industrial design, after completing one of the new three-year broad degree courses now being established in several schools of architecture. In engineering the position is less clear, but if engineering schools develop options for students interested and skilled in design - as I believe they should - then there will also be a group of valuable entrants to post-graduate design courses from this source. But the post-graduate courses will not be the same for students coming from architecture or engineering and those coming from DipAD. Probably different schemes will have to be developed for each. When I was invited to give this oration, I asked several men who had made outstanding personal contributions to British design to tell me of their own experience and views, and I would like to conclude by quoting one of them. "I think that I could accurately sum up the chief ingredients in my own history as follows. First, I was taught mathematics extremely well by two highly capable performers, and this paved the way for my specialising in structural design; I have no doubt that every designer must be taught mathematics and must be made to specialise in something; it is only by the extreme refinement of design that comes from specialisation and the agony of reaching the final 5 per cent of real understanding that the difficulty of designing anything can be borne upon anybody. Confidence can only come by participating in properly organised schemes for making young chaps stand on their own feet, leaving them alone to take decisions, and letting them suffer from the consequences if they get it wrong. I need hardly add that the injection of courage into all this is probably the most important ingredient of the lot." That was from Sir George Edwards, designer of the Viscount aircraft. | Source: | Vads | Creator: | Artist: Lord Llewelyn Davies | Identifier: | http://www.vads.ac.uk/large.php?uid=8289... | Go to resource |
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