The didactic body: Interdisciplinary design pedagogy in 1970s Denmark

This paper explores alternative pedagogical approaches that centred the relationship between the human body and design in 1970s Denmark. Initiated by lecturers at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts – School of Architecture (today Royal Danish Academy – Architecture, Design, Conservation), a series of interdisciplinary ergonomics seminars (1974–78) at Institute 3C2 brought together more than a hundred students and lecturers from architecture, design, dance, and the medical and social sciences. Through archival research and oral history, I analyse these overlooked teaching practices and situate them within broader societal changes. Informed by disability studies, I examine how the seminars negotiated between models of the medicalised body, grounded in measurement and physiology, and the social body that emphasised variation and lived experiences. I argue that the seminars neither rejected nor embraced either model but explored frictions between them. I conclude with reflections on the bodily imaginaries they fostered in education.