Learning to Design. A road-map of Specialized Design Project

Abstract

How does an architect or a designer think? How can we teach someone to think like one? These are some questions we often turn to during the teaching process, questions to which architects, designers or teachers have proposed many answers and ideas. In the academic environment students learn to create: they learn to create houses, other architectural programs, exterior spaces, interior spaces, objects; in fact, they learn to create. Regardless the project's purpose, the process by which they come to create is the most important skill acquired in school. In terms of contemporary pedagogy, in the field of product design, we try to invest the student with skills that will allow him to approach projects of any kind; skills that will become reflexes. The analysis of a project theme-experiment and its development over two years gives us an insight into the ways of teaching / learning product design. A project theme composed as a teacher-student dialogue, a free project theme -with multiple scenarios of each student- allows us to see a wider perspective on how the future designer learns to create. Looking at design as a process, and less as a result, we ask ourselves how the student learns to design and what are the best ways to stimulate him.