When is Practice-based Research?
Design faculty routinely approach making as a form of critical research inquiry, working to remove the invisible division between theory and practice. The range of terms used to describe the melding of research and making: “research-creation,” “practice as research,” and “practice-led research” (among others). Despite OCAD U coming from a heritage of making and experimentation, there are comparatively few chances to reflect on the work being done at the university, and to collectively discuss the modes of engagement within diverse disciplinary perspectives. Consideration of what is “research” is altered when discussed in the creative projects of design-scholars.
October 18 TOPIC:
The Scholarship of Discovery
§ Search for new knowledge
§ Traditional definition of scholarship
§ Discovery of new information and new models
§ Sharing discoveries through scholarly publication
LOCATION: Digital Salon
Room RHB 701k
Schedule
11:00-12:00
KEYNOTE: Lois Weinthal, Chair, School of Interior Design, Ryerson University
Professor Weinthal’s practice investigates the relationship between architecture, interiors, clothing and objects, resulting in works that take on an experimental nature. Her teaching explores these topics where theoretical discussions in seminars are put into practice in design studio. Her seminar teaching led to the publication, Toward a New Interior: An Anthology of Interior Design Theory (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011), which organizes the interior as a series of layers that surround the body. This anthology won the Interior Design Educators Council (IDEC) Book Award in 2014. Professor Weinthal uses the design studio as an opportunity for students to test ideas by constructing them at full-scale.
Additional publications include co-editor of After Taste: Expanded Practice in Interior Design with Kent Kleinman and Joanna Merwood-Salisbury (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011), which began as a series of symposiums to address the interdisciplinary nature of interiors and the tangent disciplines that affect and inform it. A recent publication includes The Interior Design Handbook, co-edited with Graeme Brooker (Berg Publishers, 2013). In 2014-2015, she will become Associate Editor of the international journal: Interiors: Design, Architecture, Culture (Bloomsbury). She has received grants from the Graham Foundation, Fulbright, and DAAD and has exhibited and lectured nationally and internationally. Design work from her studio courses have won national awards and have been published internationally.
Previously, she was Director of the Interior Design Program at Parsons The New School for Design and Graduate Advisor for the Master of Interior Design Program in the School of Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin. She received her Master of Architecture from Cranbrook Academy of Art and Bachelor of Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design.
12:00-1:00
Research-creation roundtable: Research Ethics Board – Nancy Snow
Presentations by Faculty of Design members, collaborators and guests + discussion
1:00-2:00pm
Research-creation speed dating
Meet faculty doing groundbreaking practice-based research!
UPCOMING:
November 15 11:00 - 2:00 The Scholarship of Integration
February 14 11:00 - 2:00 The Scholarship of Learning and Teaching
March 21 11:00 - 2:00 The Scholarship of Engagement