Abstract
The development of the foundational body of knowledge is a primary concern of Design Research. This body of knowledge is essential to design education and practice, which shape the human-made environment. This article presents Design Knowledge Archaeology, an emerging approach for systematically rediscovering and developing this foundation by analyzing the evolution of knowledge structures within design discourse. This article outlines and evaluates three distinct methods: the Focused approach, the Discourse approach, and the AI-enabled Semantic Similarity approach. The Focused approach reconstructs the intellectual lineage of a single perspective or recovers marginalized accounts. The Discourse approach maps competing perspectives and discontinuities across a topic. The AI-enabled Semantic Similarity approach identifies thematic patterns in large datasets. This article contributes to Design Research by providing practical guidance and illustrating each method with concrete examples, equipping researchers with a Design Research methodology for developing a more robust, diverse foundational body of design knowledge.
Keywords
design knowledge archaeology, design knowledge, design theory, design thinking
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1573
Citation
Auernhammer, J., Bekamiri, H., and Drake, M. (2026) Design knowledge archaeology: Developing the body of design knowledge and theory, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1573
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Design knowledge archaeology: Developing the body of design knowledge and theory
The development of the foundational body of knowledge is a primary concern of Design Research. This body of knowledge is essential to design education and practice, which shape the human-made environment. This article presents Design Knowledge Archaeology, an emerging approach for systematically rediscovering and developing this foundation by analyzing the evolution of knowledge structures within design discourse. This article outlines and evaluates three distinct methods: the Focused approach, the Discourse approach, and the AI-enabled Semantic Similarity approach. The Focused approach reconstructs the intellectual lineage of a single perspective or recovers marginalized accounts. The Discourse approach maps competing perspectives and discontinuities across a topic. The AI-enabled Semantic Similarity approach identifies thematic patterns in large datasets. This article contributes to Design Research by providing practical guidance and illustrating each method with concrete examples, equipping researchers with a Design Research methodology for developing a more robust, diverse foundational body of design knowledge.