Conceptual Thinking at the Intersection of Art and Design: Informal Education Studies (2009–2015)

Abstract

The matter of disconnection while using formal or informal knowledge in design education, constitutes a serious problem. Thinking via concepts is one of the methods used against disconnection. Concepts that have an important place in both the analysis and the synthesis phases, play significant roles in legibility and correlations through facilitating and guiding design process. This study aims to contribute to mobilizing design process, focusing on various branches of art and utilizing 'conceptual thinking' as a tool. Conceptual framework is based on the items 'relating, meaning, communicating, analysis and synthesis, abstraction'. The method is considered in a holistic sense through both subjective and objective concepts. The workshops which are sampled in this study, titled as 'Art and Design', ' Literature and Design' and 'Music and Design' were implemented in Yıldız Technical University, Department of Architecture by means of integrating into formal and informal education process between the years of 2009-2015 with a wide range of participants from different universities. The approaches of workshops support 'warm-up' phase and contribute design thinking techniques in applied design courses through strengthening the communication between student-student, lecturer-student.

Keywords

• informal education
• conceptual thinking; art and design; abstraction; design education.