VERSUS

The recent decompartmentalisation of scientific and technological research is a response to the challenges of contemporary innovation. Its strong technological content means that it needs to converge with creation and industry in order to respond to the societal challenges of our time. This implies the development of new collaborative practices between science and design to build the world of tomorrow. However, designers, scientists and engineers are coming up against new and fundamental problems: they don't speak the same language, they don't have the same methodological bases and the same tools, and they don't necessarily agree on the purpose and ethics of the project.

Thanks to a collaborative approach combining design and bioengineering, designer Guillian Graves and bioengineer Michka Mélo have produced a circumstantial study of new collaborations between design and science in the form of an essay: Versus.

Constructed in the form of a dialogue, Versus recounts the encounters, research and experiments carried out by the duo over the course of almost a year. It also recounts the pitfalls of such a collaboration, with its divergences in methodology, syntax, tools and objectives.

In short, Versus offers a practical analysis of these collaborations, providing the reader with keys to understanding the changes taking place in our practices.