Humanities Design Lab: Understanding and Shaping Cross-fertilization Experiences

The Humanities Design Lab at the Politecnico di Milano was born with the idea of studying the overlapping between design sciences and humanistic knowledge. Identifying and analyzing past and on-going experiences it explores trans-disciplinary practices to grasp different approaches, develop concrete exchange forms or propose new kinds of mutual cooperation. The work of the HD Lab was inspired by the growing role that humanities research is playing internationally. However, it is also strongly distinguished by the Italian polytechnic tradition that considers “humanities in practice” as a valuable contribution to an open-ended design system. A preliminary grounding research considered several on-going theoretical and practical case-studies and mapped institutions, centers, universities and other international bodies committed to shaping possible models of cooperation between design and the disciplines that study human complexity. From this observation a dual interpretation emerged: the relationship between design and humanities is a two-way route and can be represented by a polar pattern. On one hand, a comparison of knowledge and epistemological models becomes a driver of a trans-disciplinary approach and, on the other, the analytical and generative tools act as activators of new processes that can both promote new paths of cooperation and open research. Moreover this relationship can be either humanities-driven or design-driven. This paper will present the general framework through three levels of discussion: the cultural background that led to the foundation of the laboratory; the results of the grounding research; the exemplification of the HD Lab’s approach through its first year of activities.