Dear Ken,
Thank you for posting Peter Butenschon's keynote speech
for the Common Ground conference. I find it, at once,
challenging and exciting. And I think its identifies,
not just an agenda for designing and design research,
but also what is the real Common Ground of our field.
Over the years in which I have been interested in
designing, I have found that many people (designers
and others) share the observation that designing covers
an enormous diversity of activities and things. When
you look across designing and designs from different
domains, done by different people, with different
backgrounds and experiences, from different cultures
and communities, done at different times, under different
conditions, in different situations, what you see is
even more differences. I know several people, all of
whom I happily call designers, who each claim not to
see anything they could call designing in the work of
the others--an electronic engineer who designs mixed
analog/digital circuits who sees nothing like designing
in story writing, for example.
The reality is, I would say, that there is NO common
ground in the activities and practices we see in real
designing. Kristina Niedderer, in her PhD-Design post
of 18.09.2002, makes, for me, the same observation, but
then suggests that the Common Ground is to be found in
the common form of the "... creative process of manipulation
that is principally devoid of its own content." I agree
with this idea, and have tried to pursue it in my own
work on developing a Knowledge Level general theory of
designing. However, I do not think this is common
ground. This is more like a Common Ceiling, or, as
I prefer to think of it, as the Common Vaulting high
up above the central nave of the Cathedral in which we
practice designing and design research.
To see the commonality of form in all designing, requires
us to abstract away from the details of all the diversity
of designing that we see on the ground. Looking down
from high enough up hides these details, leaving the
overall common form to be more easily perceived. But,
if this abstract view is to be more than that, just a
view, it cannot be just any "birds-eye" view. For such
an abstract view to be of real theoretical value, it must
have a well defined and stable connection to the ground
activity it is supposed to be a theoretical understanding
of. This is why I like the metaphor of the high vaulting.
The closely fitting carefully constructed structure and
form of the vaulting must be properly supported by a
series of well placed and well built columns and arches.
In other words, there are constraints on the form and
construction of the vaulting---on our abstract theoretical
view of designing--that emanate from the ground--from our
designing activity, in all its diversity.
In summary then, I think that what Kristina identifies,
is not the Common Ground of our field, but the Common
Vaulting, the common theory, that we should be trying to
build high above it, and below which we can all work,
doing designing and design research--the high vaulting
of the church in which we can all practice and research.
The real Common Ground is what I think Peter Butenschon
identifies, and identifies in quite a literal way. The
Common Ground of our field is the ground on which all
people live; the ground that forms all of our habitats;
the ground from which we take or obtain just about all
of what we need to survive, and all of what we use to
construct the environments we design and build for
ourselves.
As Peter Butenschon sets out, there are some big
differences in what this common ground looks like
in different places. For many, indeed for most people
in the world, their ground barely supplies their basic
needs--they have no time or possibility to have desires
--or it is the ground that they must fight for, or
that is fought over by others, leaving them destitute
and often worse, or it is the ground destroyed or
drastically changed by natural events and processes,
or indirectly by human activity. It is also the ground
in which others---and I guess this includes just about
all of us on this list--live our relatively well
supplied for and comfortable lives, and in which our
designing is directed towards satisfying our desires,
not just our needs, and at provoking more desires to
be satisfied. It is also the common ground in which
we live our "privatised" lives.
The Common Ground of our field is the real ground, la
tierra, the surface of the earth, which provides the
habitats of all peoples. It is the ground that we
seek to change by designing, so as to satisfy our
needs and desires. It is the ground from which we
take what we need to realise our designs, and so
really change our lives and livelihoods. It is the
ground from which we should derive a common perspective
for our field. It is the ground that both results in
the needs and desires of the people who's habitats it
forms, and that provides the means of satisfying them,
once we have designed ways of doing this.
The Common Ground of our field, I submit, is the
the source, common to all people, whatever their
condition, of the needs and desires that designers,
of all kinds, at all times, in all places, in all
their diverse ways, try to find ways of satisfying.
What I think is important, and challenging about
Peter Butenschon's paper, is that he makes us see
that designing is NOT some specialised, luxury-like
activity of our sophisticated, so called advanced,
societies; it is a necessary and basic activity of
all human kind.
Taking this, the real common ground of designing,
to be THE Common Ground of our field, and then taking
a more wide ranging scan of what we find there, in
terms of humans conditions, would, I think, help us
as a field to arrive at a more common and more easily
agreed upon agenda. And one that is not apparently
so preoccupied with our own, overly privatised and
sophisticated ways of living.
Best regards,
Tim
-------------------------
Tim Smithers
Donostia / San Sebastián,
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