PERIOD: FEBRUARY - MARCH - APRIL Is there a role for design research in the types of insight and knowledge that polytechnic schools create? This central question acts as the introductory overview for the course, which has been created in order to establish a firm basis for this emerging field of investigation. Until recently, there has been a reluctance to acknowledge and accept the role of design research as a legitimate research area, enabling transdisciplinary conversations. An indicative bibliography discussed in the prologue to the course alludes to a long history of transmission of knowledge and decision making related to the city which can be seen as being in the spirit of research-by-design. The aim of this course is to stimulate awareness on research-by-design as the means to reframe socio-technical aspects of urban challenges. As a practice, design activity delves into man-made things (defined in literature as what characterizes material culture and/or the artificial world). Being related to the social definition of goals and functioning, design problems are recognised as ill-defined, ill-structured, or “wicked” [Simon, 1968; Rittel & Webber, 1973]. In this light, design has been conceptualized as a specific approach to reasoning: “Design has its own distinct ‘things to know, ways of knowing them, and ways of finding out about them’” and places at its core the language of “modelling” [Cross, 1982]. We adopt the definition of research-by-design as the actions of defining, redefining, and challenging the problem-as-given mindset – from the early stages of problem setting throughout the transformative attitude by which problems are addressed, up to the test and evaluation of possible applications. The course builds on the activities of FULL-Future Urban Legacy Lab., based at POLITO, that aims at providing knowledge and action in the field of relevant global urban challenges and support to local decision-making processes. The course is programmed together with the “Socio-technical Urbanization” course, which is offered as part of the URD PhD Programme.

After an initial seminar on the theoretical and methodological references for applying “research-by-design” to city challenges, participants to this course will have the opportunity to explore “research-by-design” with expert practitioners. PhD candidates will be invited to reflect upon their uses of design in research matter, particularly discussing whether a 'designerly way' of thinking exists in the way knowledge is enhanced, consolidated, shared or falsified by-design in their research work.

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Gli studenti e le studentesse con disabilità o con Disturbi Specifici di Apprendimento (DSA), oltre alla segnalazione tramite procedura informatizzata, sono invitati a comunicare anche direttamente al/la docente titolare dell'insegnamento, con un preavviso non inferiore ad una settimana dall'avvio della sessione d'esame, gli strumenti compensativi concordati con l'Unità Special Needs, al fine di permettere al/la docente la declinazione più idonea in riferimento alla specifica tipologia di esame.