Aveiro 2014

Tradition, Transition, Trajectories:
major or minor influences?

Introduction
Tradition has a powerful significance in our culture, and is responsible of the transmission of knowledge between generations. Looking at tradition through design (ideas, concepts, experiences and practice) it is possible to identify different influences and to understand how industrialization affected culture.

The constants influences, changes and transformations in society required new approaches to design. On the one hand the desire encourages creativity, on the other, it engenders responses that try to break with the past in order to become a ‘new reference’. Transition is to understanding those changes in order to comprehend how they will influence the future.

Different influences might lead to the different Trajectories in design. This may vary depending on the perspective of each interlocutor (authorship, educators, theorists).

Starting from the example of the Portuguese culture, which embraced strong influences from other countries, it would be interesting to move in this direction in order to understand what happened in other places in the world. Design has affirmed itself in a very particular way, undergoing a number of alterations and influences as a result of external and internal factors of the discipline itself. An examination of those issues, from the perspective of tradition, transition and trajectories, will allow us to understand what was/is/will be the ‘state of art’ of design history and design studies in an increasing  number of countries.