Design, thinking and metaphors: On the cognitive style of engineering and design education

Book chapter, 2025

This chapter explores how we think through and with designed artifacts. For good or bad, our imagination is shaped by metaphorics borrowed from the things we build. If human cognition is contingent on our designed surroundings, the chapter suggests, this should be of interest to educators who teach about the relation between design and society. In making this argument, the chapter will argue against other accounts of thought, namely that of Hannah Arendt, who suggests that thinking is a more human – or even humanist – affair. As such, the chapter discusses the place of design education in relation to the human sciences, on the one hand, and to the liberal arts, on the other. It concludes by highlighting the stakes of design education: Design activities shape our tools and material surroundings, but also our mental worlds. Thus, design education may foster the imaginative – not only the instrumentalist – in the uses of technology.