The Pattern Project: a design history assignment

As a professor of design history for design students, I often ask, what is the value of historic analysis and research in building design skills? Design students regularly regard research as an insular endeavor rather than integrated into the design process. This paper focuses on “The Pattern Project,” an assignment that uses textiles as a point of departure to explore the intersection of narrative, technology and materiality. The intention for students is to develop a methodology for the evaluation of an object or space and to gain a greater appreciation for the complexity of objects that often serve as surface decoration. In choosing a historical pattern for research and evaluation, students begin exploring the pattern formally, thereby sharpening their observation skills. Students evaluate the materiality, scale and complexity of the pattern that inevitably lead to questions about how the pattern was created and used. Through pattern research, students explore the ways in which textiles communicate and transmit meaning, and further, how textile research can be utilized to provoke an understanding of the cultural, political and economic circumstances of a particular time and place. Such an investigation naturally poses questions about production and consumption that underscore shifting economic, political, regional and global relationships. More recently, this project has been enhanced through collaboration with studio faculty, which allows students to examine their textile pattern in concert with developing tools of evaluating scale and materiality through sketching, modeling and comparative analysis.