ethos design lab

Ethos Design lab is a laboratory created in September 2022. The lab is fortunate to be located on its research ground: the school of design! The objective is to reflect and experiment around the difficulties and opportunities raised by design education. The challenges of design education are defined by the major ecological and social crises we face. The goal is to explore other pedagogical principles and to clarify the ethical and axiological positioning of the school of design in order to make it a central player in the indispensable revolutions that we must lead.

The first step is to question the organization of power within the school, by analyzing the decision-making processes, the circulation of information, the clarity of the objective that the school gives itself, and by experimenting with new forms of teaching and evaluation. The laboratory questions the verticality of the teacher-learner relationship without minimizing the risks that accompany the ideal of horizontality. In a second step, we will identify the political specificity of design education, notably in its relation to human and social sciences and philosophy. How can a school of design found and justify the metaphysical and political positioning from which its pedagogical strategy will stem? Should it make the SHS its flagship? On the contrary, should they be at the service of design? But which design? The crises impose a break with the design of the previous century, entirely devoted to the market. In this, the school is a territory revealing the more fundamental issues of design: its self-determination as a central actor - as a militant - of a world in peril.

Head of the laboratory: Paul Laborde

Ethos by design lab focuses on the design school, both as an object of study and as an academic and design opportunity. The lab is positioned on the three dimensions of design research:

1. Design studies – exploring the potential of organizational design (for the internal functioning of the school); interaction design (for inventing new classroom experiences); and keeping in mind the history of design schools, rich in experimentation.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
2. Design explorations – imagining new organizations and new political matrices; highlighting the problems and blind spots specific to any educational project; rethinking the responsibility of the designer and the students.                                                                                                                  
3. Design practice – to make the school the field of a participative design where each actor of the school, staff, teacher and student experiments, together, to open on new pedagogical postures. The laboratory thus focuses on publication, sharing with the academic community, and on in situ experimentation.