Max-Planck-Institut für empirische Ästhetik

Thinking Design x Anke Haarmann

Epistemological Aesthetics: How Practices of Design Lead to Insights

To grasp the epistemological potential of design, means to look at it in detail. Design practices can only be described as epistemic practices in specific cases, never in general terms. This is because there is a wealth of specific, situational, constantly reinvented design practices that lead to insights, rather than one single design method that brings about cognition. Using concrete case studies from design research, the lecture traces when, for example, textile bobbin lace techniques enable insights into aesthetic thinking, when sound design helps interpret chemical data, or when radical graphic design both understands and overcomes cultures of mourning…

The lecture will be held in English.

The venue is accessible.

Anke Haarmann is Professor at Leiden University (NL), where she heads the PhDArts doctoral programme for artists and designers, and at HAW Hamburg (D), where she heads the Centre for Design Research. She studied philosophy at the University of Hamburg and the Free University of Berlin, as well as fine arts at the University of Fine Arts, Hamburg. As a postgraduate, she studied at the Jan van Eyck Academy for arts, design and theory in Maastricht, and was a postdoc at the Leuphana University Lüneburg. Through publications such as Artistic Research (2019) and Specology (2023), as well as numerous handbook contributions (2015, 2021, 2023, 2025), she is one of the most important theorists in the field of artistic research and design research.

The Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics investigates why and how people create art and how they perform, experience, and evaluate it. The Institute’s focus is on music, but we also engage with other performing arts such as dance and film.