ABSTRACT
This chapter considers some contrasting concepts that can help us distinguish these two approaches (sophia and phronesis) to design research. Design, as a subject in its own right, appears during the Industrial Revolution, usually dated in the UK between roughly 1760 and 1840. Design was taught as a practice in colleges with no tradition in research. In the UK, art and design education–as opposed to apprenticeship–was taught in vocational colleges such as those set up by William Morris and others. The key notion was that design is an academic topic in its own right, and should be recognised as such; and that design research should satisfy scholarly, academic criteria using well-founded evidence applied through systematic analysis. Research based in practice is more concerned with Aristotle’s phronesis than sophia, and connects to the vocational rather than the academic mode of learning and of making and transmitting knowledge.
