This online exhibition introduces a project to document and evaluate the early history of Design Research in the UK, focusing on the Department of Design Research and its predecessors at the Royal College of Art, London.

The exhibits illustrate a number of themes, many of them concerned with the varied roles of the leader of the Department, Professor L Bruce Archer. They are organised around a series of images, highlighting important themes, and not necessarily presented in chronological order.

The exhibition has been put together by Stephen Boyd Davis, Professor of Design Research at the RCA, and Dr. Simone Gristwood of Middlesex and Lancaster universities.