A Design School's Design Philosophy

I was looking for a book in my office (Mark Baskinger and William Bardel's Drawing Ideas https://www.drawingideasbook.com/book.html) when I stumbled on a copy of 'The Brown Book' I think I stole from CMU.

This is a hardcopy outline of the CMU School of Design, written mostly (if not entirely) by Richard Buchanan in the 1990s and given to incoming faculty and doctoral students (maybe all students?) throughout that decade and into the early 2000s.

As I leafed through it, I was thinking how it should be necessary that every design school have this kind of document. Not some chatGPT'ed marketing bumph, but a considered (and so updated) statement of the assumptions, values and ambitions of the school.

A design school is after all a kind of meta-designing. Those of us privileged to teach in design schools are designing the designing of designers. We are responsible for how designers design (in) the world.

There is a tradition of certain design schools having very explicit philosophies, invariably expressed as manifestos and even diagrammed curricula. But these days, such design schools are the exception, design being just one amongst other job market oriented skills. I am not sure how many university legal and PR departments would allow design schools to have values and ambitions distinct from their overarching institutionally bland mission statements, let alone critical perspectives and avowed responsibilities.

I will try to scan the whole thing and post it somewhere (though it is a bit tricky, being in US Legal sized format).

I should indicate that this artifact makes me want design school philosophies - but I am not endorsing this particular one. Its material form is not its only anachronism - Problems of (White) Men is about right...