Exploring the Limits of CDR

Researching the History, Present and Future of Constructive Design Research

Master Course Constructive Design Research Sept 2019 – Nov 2019 // Coaches: prof. dr. ir. Stephan Wensveen and prof. dr. ir. Caroline Hummels

Within this course project, we aimed to shed light on the role of Constructive Design Research (CDR) in the current design practice.

Our insights illustrated a shift within specific elements of CDR, due to the growing complexity of the situations in which design is playing a role nowadays. This research exemplified this shift within four different elements: scale, time, impact and the role of construction. This illustrates a different role of CDR compared to the way CDR has been framed before: Where classic designs clearly show to be ranging from products, systems, spaces, or media, we see that the role of design and its impact has become more ambiguous when moving into the systemic level of wicked situations.

Reflection

Throughout this course, I gained a broader understanding of the history, origin and growth of the constructive design research field. This course has allowed me to develop myself in theoretical understandings of design research, in facilitating in-depth discussions around meta-reflections of design methodologies, in analysing big data-sets and in the ability to extract interesting themes to consider in future research

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