Where am I, Where are you?: Unravelling and Locating the Practice of Being a Designer

Abstract

Over recent years there has been extensive work done across different domains where people have endeavoured to make sense of what it is to design, to create and the various methods and modalities for articulating and facilitating this act of the known and unknown. In this paper I will discuss research undertaken into the experience of creative practice. Through this research project I was particularly interested to understand where people 'are' when they design, what is the space of that practice and how is it navigated or negotiated. The premise of this work is that design practice is an embodied mobile cultural practice that we move in and through with various viewpoints and speeds of engagement. To enable this exploration a series of landscape installations were created and a variety of practitioners were invited to engage in the space of the research in order to contemplate the space of their own practice and how it is experienced. In this case the landscape and the various interventions within it provided the introductory text that facilitated conversation; and like our individual experiences of practice, these were landscapes of familiarity and strangeness, cultural heritage, mythologies and associations. Included within the discussion will be the implications of the project's findings in the creation of spaces and contexts where design takes place.