The ESDI has played a recognised role in the higher education of professionals and teachers in the field of design since it began its activities in 1963. Particularly at undergraduate level, this school has influenced the training of generations of designers and teachers, as well as serving as the basis for the minimum curricula for bachelor's degrees in industrial design in the country (Couto, 2008; Souza, 1996). While postgraduate training was not a requirement, many ESDI graduates relied solely on graduating from the school to work in different educational institutions throughout the country.

1964 - Origins

However, the design field's perception of ESDI's pioneering spirit and influence on professional practice and undergraduate programmes was not equally reflected in its role in research and postgraduate studies. Although, in 1964, the first director, Flávio de Aquino, conceived, in the document Reformulation of a Programme, the possibility of a postgraduate course along the lines of European universities (Souza, 1996, p. 111), this idea was never put into practice. On the contrary, the emergence of postgraduate studies at the ESDI was late and took place with the opening of the academic master's programme in 2005, that is, 42 years after its inauguration - following the first postgraduate initiatives in Design, started in Brazil in 1994 by PUC-Rio.

For much of its existence, the ESDI favoured undergraduate studies, which was also reflected in the profile and work of its teaching staff, most of whom only had a bachelor's degree, while they worked professionally in prestigious regional and national law firms and institutions. Later, between the 1990s and 2000s, the proposal to create a Postgraduate Programme (PPG) was developed. It's worth noting that, according to oral reports (Seminar..., 2023) by professors present at the time, the formation of a PPG was opposed by professors at the school. This occurred in an environment that, while on the one hand sought to encourage critical thinking and research in undergraduate work, on the other did not understand the relevance of organising a PPG when the design research scene itself was still in its infancy.

Although the postgraduate programme was controversial and discontinuous, two initiatives emerged in the 1990s that contributed to the subsequent consolidation of the PPDESDI. The first was the formalisation of the proposal for a Postgraduate Programme in 1996, and the second was the launch in 1998 of the journal Arcos: design, material culture and visuality, a scientific publication that aimed to approach design in an interdisciplinary way.

1997 - Arcos magazine: design, material culture and visuality

The second initiative, the publication of the journal Arcos: design, material culture and visuality in 1997, reveals an effort to encourage and publicise scientific production in the field of design (Meirelles et al., 2023). The proposal, originally for a multidisciplinary seminar, was discussed and transformed until it became an academic journal to articulate issues relating to material culture, the design of its artefacts and visuality (Leite, 2009). The very name, Arcos, reveals both the intention to build interdisciplinary bridges and alludes to the Arcos da Lapa, near the ESDI. The magazine therefore predates the PPDESDI, even though both were the result of the same endeavour.

In order to meet the needs of a postgraduate programme, the school needed to update the profile of its teaching staff. Therefore, even in the 1990s, there was an effort to attract teachers with postgraduate degrees and an interest in research. There was also a commitment on the part of the professors to improve themselves in Postgraduate Programmes in Brazil and abroad. The result of these efforts contributed to the formation of the PPDESDI teaching staff.

2005 - Master's programme

The first proposal to create a postgraduate programme was then reformulated. The new proposal aimed to create a Master's programme in Design, with a broad area of concentration (Design), structured around three lines of research: Design and Technology; Design, Theory and Criticism; and History of Brazilian Design. The course was finally launched in 2005 (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2004), under the coordination of professors Guilherme Cunha Lima and Lucy Niemeyer (assistant coordinator), making it the fourth academic programme in this area to be set up in Brazil, after PUC-Rio (1994), UNESP (1999) and UFPE (2003).

Since then, the journal has been renamed Arcos Design and incorporated into PPDESDI, and has moved from print to digital format. The incorporation of the journal was a strategic decision to bring the Programme closer to other research in the field, to promote exchanges between researchers as authors and evaluators, and also as a way of broadening the debate inside and outside the institution.

2013 - PhD programme

The course's good performance in its first years laid the foundations for a proposal to open a PhD programme in Design to CAPES in 2012. The proposal was approved and, in March 2013, the first batch of doctoral students started.

2017 - revised lines of research

In 2016, after eleven years of activities, the lines of research were redesigned, given the arrival of new lecturers and the retirement of others. At that time, due to the teaching profile and the distribution between the lines, the two research lines of Design History and Design Theory and Criticism ended up being merged into the line Theory, Information, Society and History (TISH), while Design and Technology was renamed Technology, Product and Innovation (TPI) (Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, 2017). These programmes began operating in 2017.

However, the teaching profile has continued to change, with new entrants and other professors retiring, leading to an imbalance between the lines of research. If, initially, the distribution of professors between the lines of research was equitable, with TISH (58 per cent) and TPI (42 per cent), after the start of the quadrennium, in 2021, we began to have a more disproportionate ratio, with TISH (65 per cent) and TPI (35 per cent). Although the distribution of professors between the lines was not a problem that in itself required reformulation, the difference in concentration was also a factor in the review.

2022 - The design of the pitch

Another conceptual issue also contributed to the change in lines. In search of a broader understanding of design research, PPDESDI took on the organisation of the 14th Brazilian Congress of Research and Development in Design, proposing the motto ‘The design of the field’. The theme sought to look at design as a field, overcoming the fruitless attempt to determine a single definition of design.

Organised in collaboration with the Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing (ESPM-Rio), P&D Design 2022 sought to identify and outline the profile of design research in Brazil. In addition to organising the event, PPDESDI's work also played a significant role, with a total of 42 approved submissions and 10 papers that made it into the set of selected articles published in journals. Therefore, we believe that organising and participating in the event allowed us to take a closer look at the production of design research in general, but also at our own production.

The reflections provoked by R&D 2022, the renewal of the PPDESDI teaching staff in the early years of the 2020s, as well as the results of the evaluation cycle that pointed to the need to review the lines of research led us to important reflections based on questions raised by CAPES (2019), such as ‘Is there organicity in the Programme? Is the programme pulverised in terms of research?’

2022 - Self-evaluation

In 2022, the self-evaluation committee was created to begin work on creating internal self-evaluation processes for the programme, seeking to respond to the need for improvement and progress, including the redistribution of research lines.

In 2023, based on a wide-ranging process of self-assessment, in meetings with the broad participation of the collegiate body, a process of reviewing the lines of research was carried out in order to respond to the renewal of the teaching staff and the dynamics of the Design field.

Student participation was paramount in this process, through plenary meetings and courses focused on academic management, when an in-depth survey of the research carried out in the programme was carried out.

2024 - Designing the next 20 years

The new area of concentration comes into force: Design, technology and society, and four new lines of research:

1. Design, territorialities and anthropocene

2. Design, politics and subjectivisation

3. Design, management and innovation

4. Design, culture and visuality

To understand the new division of research lines, each line should not be taken as an exclusive delimitation of themes, but as a direction that concentrates efforts without excluding the possibility of interdisciplinary research. Similarly, key words such as ‘theory’ and ‘history’ are no longer used to define lines of research, based on the premise that all lines produce theoretical reflection and can tell design stories from different perspectives. On the other hand, ‘technology’ and ‘society’ become umbrella terms that, in relation to design, shape the new PPDESDI area of concentration: Design, Technology and Society, replacing the previous one - Design.

It was only through the collectivisation of decisions, in committees with broad faculty and student participation, and i

Bibliographical references

COUTO, Rita Maria de Souza. Writings on Design Teaching in Brazil. Rio de Janeiro: RioBooks, 2008.LEITE, João de Souza. Presentation: Long life. Arcos Design, Rio de Janeiro, v. 4, n. 1, 2009. Available at: <https://www.e-publicacoes.uerj.br/arcosdesign/article/view/82472>. Accessed on: 12 September 2024.SEMINÁRIO Revista Arcos Design 25 anos - Mesa 1. Organised by PPDESDI. Rio de Janeiro: ESDI, 2023. (112 min.), sound, colour. Available at: <https://youtu.be/LRewpJsJhZU>. Accessed on: 12 Sep. 2024.SOUZA, Pedro Luiz Pereira de. ESDI: Biography of an idea. Rio de Janeiro: EdUERJ, 1996.