Goals

Research holds a key role at ENSCI, contributing to production of knowledge in creation and innovative “industrial” design. Developed through close links with the scientific sphere, the vocation of research is to generate knock-on academic and economic effects.
Production of knowledge takes place in a laboratory, the Paris Design Lab ®, in three different contexts.

• The D-Lab: temporary training (36 months maximum) of researchers and designers, funded by businesses and focusing on a particular problematic proposed by that business.
• The Chair of Research (or of Research and Teaching): specific to ENSCI or run jointly by ENSCI and one or several partner establishments, it focuses on a problematic of general interest that is proposed to businesses so that they can support the corresponding research. A chair has a fixed duration.
• The ad hoc ENSCI or partner-based team: participates in calls for European or national projects—ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche), FNE (France Nature Environnement), DAP, (Visual Arts Department of the Ministry of Culture), etc.—with or without backing from the school. In this respect, ENSCI is a member of the CAP digital competitiveness cluster and has forged ties (since December 2008) with the MINALOGIC cluster in Grenoble and the SYSTEM@TIC cluster in Saclay.

Connections with the (public or private) scientific sphere are based on the premise that researcher-designer symbiosis is a source of new concepts for objects associated to new uses and of economic and/or social innovations that bridge the knowledge gap. Researchers range from physicians, mechanics and computer scientists to anthropologists, semiologists and sociologists. The teams are often made up of designers and researchers with very varied profiles. Ties have been forged with the technological research department at the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) and contacts have been made with other public research entities (December 2008). Researchers can also work in an industrial laboratory. The outcome of research conducted by ENSCI is organized within the school through participation in the research activities of designer-teachers and designer-students. Provided they do not fall within confidentiality clauses (e.g. patents), the results of the research are also materialised in communications at colloquiums, project presentations at trade fairs, and publications by the Éditions des Ateliers.