Abstract:

The present study addresses the conceptual mapping of Design Education, in general, focusing the conceptualization of Basic Design in the present scenario of High Education, in Portugal. A list of learning outcomes shall result from this mapping, which will be subsequently used for the developing of a Virtual Reality-based tool for teaching Basic Design. Framed in/aligned with a tradition that matches the very genesis of design, the Basic Design persists and affirms itself internationally as an inescapable construct in the training of young designers. Its basic character in and for learning Design is justified by the fact that the Basic Design derives from a holistic philosophy that promotes personal skills and the development of creativity and intuition, among others, embodied in an initiative dating from 1919 that established a semestral course known as Bauhaus Basic Design Course. The increasing interest in Basic Design, seen in the last years, reviews it as an introductory discipline to the Design principles, targeting the freshman students at the higher education in this scientific domain. In fact, some characteristics persist that allow us to perceive the proximity of the Basic Design being practiced today, with that initiated by Johannes Itten, the most prominent figure of this episode. In this sense, based on the main literature related to the Basic Design, we propose an aggregator set of characteristics that unveil the presence of teaching-learning paths that appeal to this nature. Therefore, the curricular plans of the Portuguese High Education Design courses, which were available for this study, were analyzed and, according to a previously established matrix, the Curricular Units were selected as configurators of the Basic Design principles. The selection was made according to the presence of some of the following settings, in several degrees of combination: the workload/ECTS; the experimental methodologies, with a strong practical component intending the promotion of creativity and requiring the valorization of free exploration, using different materials and techniques; the programmatic contents, by including the principles of 2D and 3D design, such as symmetry, formal coherence, modularity and standardization, and others attributed to the visual arts, such as harmony, balance, including the Gestalt laws; and, finally, learning objectives such as the design of objects according to more aesthetic than technical parameters, more personal than specific from the discipline. The first results suggest that the current Design teaching and learning is being reviewed in the principles initially formulated intending to introduce the students to the Design discipline, making it available simultaneously to its own reinvention.

Keywords:

Design teaching and learning, Basic Design, Virtual Reality.