The Tripod Approach: A Pedagogical Tool for Concept Development in Fashion and Textile Design

In this paper, we discuss ways in which to further develop the pedagogical application of the Tripod Approach, which is a framework originally developed for analysing and designing interior textiles. At Design School Kolding in Denmark, we have used it for over eight years when introducing second year bachelor fashion and textile design students to concept development. Reviewing a selection of the student concepts, we have identified some didactic and pedagogical challenges in relation to exploring the full potential of the framework. The main contribution of this paper is to demonstrate the impact of the pedagogical approach of applying a design framework for concept development in fashion and textile design. Basically, The Tripod Approach suggests considering the visual distance to the object as well as the character of the perception in an overall context. The distance can be divided into three perspectives – material, object and environment – which embrace the multiple levels from fibre to finished product within an overall context. The character of the perception can be either participant or observant. We point to three specific aspects of the framework that may benefit from an adjusted pedagogical approach. These include the students’ approach to the overall context, the starting point for concept development and the participant/observant perspective. We conclude the paper linking concept development with experimentation. We argue that the suggested improvements of approaching the framework will have a higher impact on the concept development if the students deliberately can apply different types of experiments to their work.