274 EAAE no 35 Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in Pedagogy
process of artistic creativity and its interpretation of the world. It means that the
research process as an artefact is applicable in the further procedure of the practice
of design where it confirms its purpose.
However, accepting the possibility of a presence of aesthetic intention we acknowl-
edge the research process to be a process of aesthetic articulation of ideas which,
unavoidably leads towards an aesthetic outcome. As emphasized in contemporary
aesthetic theories, existence of aesthetic intention, and we can add of a continuous
process of internal evaluation as part of a creative activity, is a sufficient aspect for
an outcome to be considered as aesthetical one. Its main characteristics are trans-
formability and search for possibilities in expression of sensorial values.
In that context, the third issue relates to the possibility of defining the nature of
research process as an aesthetic artefact, which by its own means should be based on
a particularly developed and complex set of conditions. More than that, so defined
research process can be understood as a complex form where design activity and
aesthetic activity interact in a most sensitive way. In that context research process
can be understood as an activity towards transformation of different design potentials
and possibilities, which increase complexity of various design aspects and concepts
developed on the primal stage of creative activity.
According to all that has been said it appears that the structure of the research
process is of particular importance. It is obvious that it can not consist of a fixed
matrix of implemented data, rationally prescribed procedure, and based solely on
rational knowledge and factual decision making. Through research of the basic crea-
tive impulse, intuition and imagination, established procedure should be in accord-
ance with the idea of design as a cognitive tool, implementing a constant process
of transformation: data into information, information into design potentials, design
potentials into design aspects, and design aspects into design concepts.
However, the nature of this transformation is not mechanical or strictly rationally
guided. The process can be better explained as an activity of ‘designing’ new poten-
tials, aspects and concepts, which, for its own part increases the level of complexity
of the design research process, and consequently researcher’s experience. Aesthetic
intention, evaluation and re-evaluation, in that context, coordinate the steps in the
process of transformation and the increase of its complexity.
This kind of design research process, especially if developed for educational pur-
poses, has its autonomous value, even if not finally separated from the one leading
towards rational definition of functional and material design properties. However, the
main implementation of intuition, imagination, speculative thinking, and subjective
and/or unconscious judgment of perceptual values, is placing this research process
closer to the field of primal creative experimentation with sensorial values, than to
the rational, functional and technological decision making.
Design research as explained is very close to the notion of an aesthetic discourse
as the form of ‘subjects’ mental relation to reality. It develops particular values
internal to the process of formulating new experience. In the process of evaluation
and constant transformation of sensorial values and belonging emotional reflections,
aesthetic discourse provides the primal level in investigation of new design modes.
The ‘subject’ is arguing with its own existing experience of reality using intuition and
imagination. In this way, the process of constituting a new reflection on reality is in
accordance with the ‘subject’s’ own intention for a design interpretation of that reflec-