Elaine Lee:
Faris, you speak of envisioning the Design School as a place that engenders research and experimentation in design teaching and learning. Why experimentation?
Faris Hajamaideen:
I believe experimentation is vital in challenging norms, both as a theory and in practice, or in thinking and making. It is vital that designers are made to discover new meanings in whatever they create. When we look back say the last 15 years in design education all over the world especially at the foundation level of the better schools, it has always been about techniques and strategies were devised for the students to conceive design. This must allow for the emergence of possibilities for us to deal with media and material – tactics can then be invented. This would inevitably also mean that as design teachers each and every project brief that we write must be negotiated as a premise for research and inventions.
This is experimentation.
Elaine Lee:
How is this critical self-reflection from the teaching point of view a necessity?
Faris Hajamaideen:
This is very very important, especially in a Design School. Remember, when you are training designers, you are giving them a language. So part of the education, is about training their orientation. It is not about an interior design project manifesting in space all the time. It is – again I like to use this word – a tactic to make students think in a particular way.
Elaine Lee:
Theoretical discourse of design is often buoyant and the teaching team is diversified. What are you anticipating in the development of the “sacred” project brief?
Faris Hajamaideen:
I have spoken about the need for the project brief to be considered as a platform for research and intellectual development – for both the teaching team and the students. It should be developed as a probe, critique or even a catalyst. Design processes are fundamental in the development of the students’ skills to critique and negotiate issues, media, matter etc… and hopefully unravel meanings. It is important that students see meaning and potentials in the issues they encounter in studio projects.
Common Foundation is one of the biggest platforms we have experimented with over the last few years. This year, one of the projects the students completed was to skin the wire models. It was really uncomfortable for the students because they worked with materials that they are unsure of and they start asking: “I don’t know what this has got to do with DGDD or DID”. This is the challenge we need to face and slowly develop students to realize the potentialities of the design education we have prepared for them.
Elaine Lee:
Have you considered if this challenge might be a deterrent for students, who wished to take on a conventional design course?
Faris Hajamaideen:
It all depends on how the term experimentation is articulated. It comes back to how we develop project briefs. In each project brief, there are methods to develop for the student to enter into the project. Design must be approached and engaged as an adventure. The biggest challenge is to develop a mindset in students to re-evaluate the conventional wisdom of what interior design, games design or product design is.
Having said that, it must be clear that this term ‘experimentation’ that we are using refers to a culture we want to create for students to develop methodologies to find new ways of speaking about existing things. But this approach MUST be complemented by an iterative process, which hones fundamental skill sets such as drawing, modelling and proficiency in using design software.
If I can use DID Year 2 as an example. There are projects that are purely experimental, where students are encouraged to play. But we also deliberately design projects to prepare students towards articulating into the industry.
Elaine Lee:
You have given the team the mandate to experiment and challenge. What are the mechanisms that are set in place to support it? Have you moved beyond discussions and postulations?
Faris Hajamaideen:
We are investing our resources in pedagogy development, conducting master-classes and cross-disciplinary workshops.
For example DXPD over the last year or so has been running a vertical studio. It is becoming a research platform. It is an interesting model in which the students from different levels participate in a studio project.
DID Year 3 projects (giant structures) have quite astonished visitors and allowed for new conversations on how we approach the idea of the interior.
DGDD is collaborating with AStar and the Games Resource Centre (GRC) at InnoVillage. This is really a positive move and very beneficial for the students involved.
DVMD is looking at changes to its curriculum and is amidst introducing specialization modules that encourage explorations in illustration, photography and new media.
The ambition for the school is for students at the end of the 3 years, to articulate their individual positions or methods in whatever they design and to be proficient in the technologies to realise it.
