Design Principles and Guidelines; Bridging the Gap Between Science and Design

Landscape architecture is growing as a discipline and more landscape architects than before choose an academic career and get their PhD. New academic journals emerge and papers get published. In landscape architecture schools however, a gap is growing between more research and more design oriented students and teachers. Possibly the development of so called design principles and design guidelines could be a middle ground between doing only research or only design. A study of recent Phd studies and Msc studies explores the development of design principles and guidelines as a product that holds the middle ground between design and research. Design guidelines offer what Aristotles has described as Phronesis “knowledge in the making” and perhaps what Cross refers to as designerly ways of knowing. Design guidelines are less specific than individual design solutions for a specific location and thus are a form of generalised knowledge. The examples point to the usefulness of design principles and guidelines, but also point to the requirement of testing. It is therefore doubtful whether well-developed design guidelines are the timesavers our students hope them to be.