Abstract
Design as a discipline is comparatively young. Epistemologically, this means that theories are not profoundly established and that there is a widespread tendency to adopt concepts from other disciplines. Nevertheless, there exist some disciplinary core values, methods to operationalize them, and applications that exemplify and manifest these values. This study employs Lakatos’ theory of science to elucidate values, methods, and applications in sustainable design (SD) concepts, selected from current sustainable design literature. The goal of the paper is to point out possible ways of interaction between the concepts for the benefit of two larger fields – design and sustainability. Following the introduction, the second section sketches a short history of the development of sustainable design. Section three introduces an SD epistemology with help of Lakatos’ model. Section four presents ideas, methods, and applications of representative SD concepts within three categories: natural science-, social science - and practice- based oriented. Section five discusses similarities and differences and suggests how the concepts can be combined, methodologically and practically. While Lakatos’ theory of science allows to scrutinize sustainable design theory, methods and applications systematically, an analysis of similarities, differences and connections between the concepts may encourage to develop sustainable design within a wider context such as e.g the Sustainable Development Goals. One epistemological challenge here is balancing transdisciplinary research approaches with the disciplinary designerly core.
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
KEYWORDS
Sustainable design, Lakatos, Transdisciplinarity, SDGs
