‘A dialogue between the real-world and the operational model’ – The realities of design in Bruce Archer’s 1968 doctoral thesis
- Submitting institution
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Royal College of Art(The)
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- Boyd Davis3
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
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10.1016/j.destud.2017.11.005
- Title of journal
- Design Studies
- Article number
- -
- First page
- 185
- Volume
- 56
- Issue
- -
- ISSN
- 0142-694X
- Open access status
- Compliant
- Month of publication
- May
- Year of publication
- 2017
- URL
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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142694X17300893?via=ihub
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The article addresses a radical change in the thinking of Bruce Archer, perhaps the most significant figure to date in the history of design research (a discipline he was instrumental in creating but where his contribution is decreasingly understood): this change is traced from his early attempts to scientize design to the influential proposition that design is a third way of dealing with the world, distinct from the sciences and humanities.
A close reading of Archer’s doctoral thesis, extended interviews with nine of Archer’s contemporaries, archival research in collaboration with Dr. Gristwood, at RCA, V&A and Design Archive Brighton, analysis of 25 other Archer writings of the period and other texts, address the question of what changed in Archer’s thinking and why. The changes are traced to contemporary intellectual influences, notably cybernetics, and in particular to Archer’s growing practical experience of complex multi-stakeholder projects. Archer’s surviving contemporaries were given an opportunity to comment on draft versions of the article: they reported finding some of it surprising, but unarguable.
The article was invited by the editors of Design Issues, based on a paper among 15 chosen from 240 in the proceedings of the Design Research Society Conference 2016, whose organisers also invited Boyd Davis to develop an online exhibition (https://www.drs2016.org/exhibition) to document the early days of design research at the RCA.
The work built on prior research in:
Computing, Design, Art: Reflections on an Innovative Moment in History in the Springer volume History and Philosophy of Computing 3rd International Conference, Pisa, Italy, 8-11 October 2015
The Reappearing Computer: the past and future of computing in design research in Proc. DRS 2014: Design’s Big Debates, Umeå, Sweden, 16-19 June 2014.
Related publication: Boyd Davis & Vane (2020) Design as Externalization: enabling research, Information Design Journal 25 (1), 28-42.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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