Challenges and Opportunities for Establishing Design as a Research Discipline in Civil and Environmental Engineering

There are a number of fields including architecture, industrial design, and urban planning and design, where design is the discipline upon which all research and teaching activities are based. In other fields such as aerospace and mechanical engineering, design is a sub-discipline with its own faculty, research and education communities, conferences, and journals.

However, design remains an emerging sub-discipline in civil and environmental engineering – practiced, valued, and taught but not subject to rigorous academic research. This paper presents some of the challenges associated with the establishment of design as a research discipline within civil and environmental engineering, some of the benefits and opportunities that will come from that establishment, and some evidence for the fact that this process has already begun.