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The emergence of a Philosophy of Design

Per Galle.
Danish Centre for Design Research, The Danish Design School. 2007-02-07

Where does the philosophy of design come from; can it be traced back to some originator? As the following subjective and unsystematic sketch will show, there are no definite answers to these questions, and yet the field does have a history of its own.

An obvious place to look for the roots of the philosophy of design would be Design Studies, which is widely recognized as the leading international journal for peer-reviewed publication of research in all fields of design, including methodology and theory of design. It has been produced since 1979 in co-operation with the Design Research Society. During the first two decades a mere handful of papers appeared in the journal primarily addressing philosophical issues of design, although not always explicitly classifying their subject as philosophy (Broadbent, 1980; Protzen and Alexander, 1980; Cross et al, 1980; Catháin, 1982; Daley, 1982; Schön, 1988; Coyne and Snodgrass, 1991; Hertz, 1992; Coyne and Snodgrass, 1993; Liddament, 1996; Janlert and Stolterman, 1997; Galle, 1999; Liddament, 1999; Handa, 1999; Love, 2000).

If we subsume ‘the logic of design’ (March, 1976) under philosophical issues of design, another handful may be added to our list (Goel, 1988; Zeng and Cheng, 1991; Roozenburg, 1993; Galle, 1996, 1997; Baljon, 1997).

During the 1990’ies and the early years of the new millennium, some philosophers took an interest in the nature of artefacts in their own right (Hilpinen, 1992, 1993; Dipert, 1993; Hilpinen, 1999; Technè Group, 2001), or considered in broader contexts (Inwagen, 1990; Denkel, 1996). Since the production of artefacts is what design is aiming at and owes its existence, it seems fair to include their philosophical analysis as a branch of the philosophy of design.

But for no evident reason focused philosophical inquiries into design itself, remained few and far between. Such studies did appear, to be sure; not only those in Design Studies already mentioned, but others as well (Alexander et al, 1977; Alexander, 1979; Baljon, 1982; Hillier et al, 1984; Broadbent, 1984; Bamford, 1990; Coyne, 1991; Oksala, 1993; O’Hear, 1993; Ekholm, 1996; Tondl, 1998; Flusser, 1999). In many cases, however, interesting discussions of design-related issues were intertwined with other lines of philosophical thought (Castañeda, 1986; Sargent, 1994; Roozenburg and Eekels, 1995; Rosenman and Gero, 1998).

Thus there has been a steady trickle of literature on, or pertaining to, the philosophy of design during the last couple of decades in the 20th century. It seems impossible to establish, except by arbitrary convention, any obvious ‘date of birth’ of the philosophy of design as a discipline. However, to my mind, two publications would seem to have consolidated the philosophy of design as I understand it: the Doctoral Education in Design conference in La Clusaz (Durling and Friedman, 2000) which allocated considerable space to the subject; and the publication of a special issue of Design Studies on the philosophy of design (Galle, 2002) which has been followed by an increasing number of papers on the subject in recent times.

For the bibliographic details of the literature mentioned above, as well as more recent developments, see the CEPHAD bibliography.