Abstract:
This report sets out to examine the relationship between the bodies of knowledge of product design and architectural design. That is, what does each claim it should 'know' in order to legitimate itself as a professional form of social organisation? What is it about these bodies of knowledge that makes them similar or different from each other? How have their relationships changed? These are the central questions of this report.
Being an inquiry into differences makes this study just as much an investigation of similarities. Are there particular characteristics common to both and, if so, which? And how do they complement or limit each other?
One cannot escape the fact that these fields determine each other, just as the stresses, strains and anxieties in the maintenance of collective identities reflect the workings of the structured society as a whole. One purpose of this report is to undertake a critical analysis of that relationship.
This study involves more framing of questions and bringing up problems than attempting comprehensive conclusions. It attempts to draw intelligently on history, which is particularly stimulating since it continually derives new conclusions on the basis of existing facts. Each subject sets off a concentration of actions and reactions. The hypothesis of one author is immediately given a new interpretation by another. And this, surely, is what writing history is all about. Are not interpretations, rather than plain facts, the crux of the matter, the thing that makes it exciting? And can a report be more than that anyway: an interpretation; a train of thought; an argument; an injection into the body of knowledge; a point of view based on existing things which creates the next link in the chain? ?
