Research Centre Links

ENSCI-Les Ateliers forges partnerships with the public research sphere. The school places designers (graduate and postgraduate students) into the very heart of laboratories for hands-on collaboration with researchers and developers.

Project to establish ENSCI-Les Ateliers in Grenoble.
ENSCI is opening a branch in Grenoble (September 2009) where design students will carry out their projects in close ties with the experts at MINATEC as well as with businesses, notably in the MINALOGIC competitive cluster. Students training at Grenoble (for one semester, extendible to two) will also follow theoretical and practical studies in Grenoble’s teaching establishments.
Students at the ENSCI branch can prepare their degree (paper and project) on the themes that mobilize the special abilities of the Grenoble scientific cluster.
Lastly, research teams (D-Lab) will be formed to tackle businesses’ questions concerning micro-technologies and nanotechnologies and their applications (health, energy, transport...). Led by a senior designer, the teams will include postgraduate designers and researchers in different scientific fields (including the human and social sciences).

MINATEC opens up its scientific and technical expertise in advanced materials and electronics and their applications to industrial designers (students and researchers). ENSCI brings its experience in industrial design research and training, notably founded on practical projects.
A similar project is also in preparation that will lead to another branch being opened in the Saclay-Palaiseau science and technology cluster.

The founding premise

Research furthers knowledge. Researchers intuit possible uses of their technical and scientific progress.
Design (as taught at ENSCI) is progressing in terms of practices, objects and their uses.
The symbiosis between research and design increases researchers’ propensity to innovate (innovative technology applications) and designers’ propensity to solve practical problems in various life contexts (“innovative humanisation of technologies” – ICSID)
The researchers working with designers in the ENSCI / MINATC approach can range from physicists, electronics engineers and computer scientists to anthropologists, sociologists and semiologists.
The designers working with researchers in the ENSCI / MINATEC approach can be professionals and/or designer-students, as well as users or potential users of new objects engaged in co-design approaches.
The convergent “technology, design, user” approach means that new material or immaterial objects can be designed and associated to new uses and economic outlets.