A knowledge broker is defined by Morgan Meyer, as someone who "sits in between knowledge producers, [such as] scientists … and those who use knowledge, such as policymakers, the general public, or people working in the health domain. Knowledge brokers try to bridge the gap that can exist between those two worlds and build connections.”
Well, from a limited understating of what you mean here by designer, I would say yes. But then, it depends on 'designing what' urban planning and designing of buildings etc. is usually based on knowledge of architecture and similar fields. So in that sense designing is somewhere at the intersection of knowledge and practice.
Design thinking is a human-centered, prototype-driven process for the exploration of new ideas that can be applied to operations, products, services, strategies, and even management. If this is what the query seeks to investigate, given the somewhat loose reference to "designers", I would at a glance find congruity between designing and knowledge brokering. And so, Design Thinking, available a https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266477210_Design_Thinking, may be of interest.
PS: To note, the current one-size-fits-all approach to design thinking cannot fix all that ails an organization: beyond brokering, one also needs to engage in design doing. Away from design thinking, this squarely in the realm of knowledge economies, a sobering example of the limitations of knowledge brokering can be found in Knowledge Sharing for Development: Dead Slow Ahead?, available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314255768_Knowledge_Sharing_for_Development_Dead_Slow_Ahead.
Article Design Thinking
Article Knowledge Sharing for Development: Dead Slow Ahead?
Could a designer be understood as a knowledge broker?
Knowledge broker primary role is to serve as a mediator / middleman between knowledge provider & knowledge consumer. Because of this unique role sometimes or some knowledge brokers do incorporate the role of designer to design the knowledge base / repository, schema, structure etc. & the appropriate access / interface, middleware etc. between the knowledge providers & consumers because they have the deep understanding on what the providers can provide & what the consumers really need.
The best approach to find the knowledge brokers is to take an "x-ray" or CATscan of the organization or community you are interested in. Who is already playing the role of a knowledge broker -- passing information/knowledge from one group to another?
In the attached diagram you see three people playing the role of knowledge broker. Each numbered node represents an employee. A green link represents a knowledge/information sharing relationship. And a gold square surrounds the nodes who are in a group.
Employee 4 is connected to all four groups. S/he is the key broker -- the central pass-through point for all groups. But nodes 2 and 5 are also brokers -- connecting their group to the adjacent group. Nodes 2 and 5 are shown as connectors where two gold frames intersect.
To find the existing knowledge brokers, do an x-ray using social network analysis!
Another example is described here... this example is from an actual client.
http://www.thenetworkthinkers.com/2015/03/discovering-emergent-communities-of.html
Is all this discussion arising out of my paper on 'designing'? Yes, a designer is a 'knowledge broker' even according to my paper which is being published as a chapter by Springer Verlag (will be online soon). Designing is an 'innovation' not an 'invention'. My article clearly documented how since the times of Everett Rogers, the Stanford University has been pioneering the 'designing' and 'innovating' solutions to socio, economic and anthropological issues. A designer is thus a repository of information, technology and refinement.
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