STEAM Powered: An Argument for the Robust Integration of Artistic and Engineering Practices in Design for Additive Manufacturing

Additive manufacturing (AM) has been widely integrated in engineering institutions as it can enable designs of seemingly infinite complexity. Despite this potential, research has demonstrated the difficulty in encouraging engineering students to think beyond traditional manufacturing boundaries. Undergraduate programs in the arts have likewise embraced AM for the complex artistic concepts it enables. But, when contrasted against engineers, art students may be more inclined to leverage the geometric freedom of AM by virtue of fundamental differences in which creativity manifests in STEM practitioners and artists. As such, there is a need for the robust convergence of STEM and Arts disciplines in an undergraduate STEAM design framework, which encourages engineering students to adopt arts-based practices to create new, innovative, products outside the realm of conventional design concepts. In this paper, the authors make an argument for such a framework, grounding it in fundamental epistemic practices within both engineering and artistic design.