Dear colleagues,

I'd like to respond to some of the earlier
threads in the conference by focusing on the
relationship between the plan for the School of
Design, and the possible actual future School of
Design; while the plan is a platform for starting
to build the school, it will have to be the
people that build it that will make the choices
and contributions that finally determine its
character.

This may sound like a truism, but my point is
that when we read and consider the plan, it may
be a good idea to separate the plan and the
eventual implementation from each other. A plan
has requirements that may force it to portray a
quite different image than what its good
implementation should eventually realize, and
maybe if we see this more clearly, we can give
even more constructive ideas for the process and
especially the implementation.


As requested by the conference convener, let me
briefly introduce myself: my name is Kari-Hans
Kommonen, and I lead a research group called ARKI
in the Media Lab, a department of digital design
and new media, at the University of Art and
Design Helsinki UIAH, in Finland.

Our work attempts to understand the changes ahead
for people and society as the world is becoming
more digital and to develop an agenda for design
in this field. We also pursue several more short
term goals, such as how to make the potential of
designing digital systems for everyday life needs
more accessible to everyone, or how to empower
people to take advantage of the reconfiguration
of the media environment brought by the massive
digital convergence taking place around us, and
we are trying to move forward in these areas with
several practical projects.


I have been following the UCI proposal discussion
with great interest not only because it is a
great exercise for the field - to together
envision what we'd all want to see in a state of
the art design school - but also because I have
been involved in somewhat related exercises here
in UIAH, first during the first ten years of
starting up the Media Lab in 1994-2003, and last
year, when the university was reorganized, and
the previous 12 or so departments were massaged
into 5, and identities, concerns, practices and
curricula of various areas of design were
compared, questioned and redesigned.

As I have been to varying extent involved in the
realization of all of these developments, I read
the UCI proposal thinking 'what does this and
that then mean in practice?'. Also, as my work
involves proposal writing, I have developed some
sensitivity to the language and arguments used in
proposals and how they depend on the intended
audience and how sometimes passionate advocating
must be buried under business-as-usual text and
vice versa, based on the political circumstances.

It would be interesting to know more about the
actual situation now in UCI relating to the
proposal and expecially what is holding it back -
that would give us the opportunity to also
understand the proposal better. Obviously the
committee practiced some kind of 'contextual
design' in writing it, and while we can learn
about the context from the proposal and the
discussion here, there will be other areas that
influence the plan in ways that we can't see.


Universities are a very particular species of
organizations, and starting a new thing in one is
not easy, especially if it might be new in global
terms. Universities have strong mechanisms for
securing the continuation of established
traditions and for strengthening disciplinary
territories and boundaries, as opposed to
experimenting with interesting new content or
organizatorial ideas.

So to start something quite big, like a school,
one must build on things that the university
knows about and that do not sound too alien to
it, using well known instruments and formal
procedures and formats, so that the university
does not reject the new organ with its numerous
means, or identify it as a cancerous growth. Also
a large unit needs lots of people for its staff
and students, so it must have many familiar
features so that people can identify a role for
themselves within it.

I think that the UCI SoD proposal does a good job
in these terms, but in addition, succeeds in
making a good marketing case, as well as
proposing means, structures and approaches that
respond to perceived contemporary needs and give
opportunities to new developments that may make
it a very special institution in our field. So as
a plan, it is very good!


But, as some people have been saying, the nature
of the school will eventually depend critically
on the people that will run it, and in my
opinion, much more than on the plan contained in
the proposal.

The plan is a framework that will enable or
disable the next layer in the architecture, and
its qualities are crucial for the next steps:
Will the proposal get a green light? Will the
funding be adequate compared to the ambitions? If
yes, will the implementers of the plan find the
right people to lead the process and construct
the functioning organism? Will the implementation
process be flexible enough to accommodate or even
embrace visions and ideas that may be better than
the original ones? Will it tolerate diversity?
Will it have a way to evolve dynamically?


I am pointing out that maybe we should not assume
that the plan as presented to us shows us the
image of the future institution. I am sure that
if it gets green light, the result will be
different in many ways. That is the nature of all
real world projects. So the key question
concerning the plan in my opinion at this stage
becomes: What can school designers do to ensure
that the qualities that they, we and the field
would like to see in the new school, can
eventually be found there - and did they succeed
in this in the current proposal? And then: What
if the proposal gets the green light - what
crucial issues/stages are next ahead?

I think that the online conference is a
breakthrough idea for processing just this, and I
would like to congratulate all involved for
coming up with the idea, for implementing it so
successfully and for getting such an enthusiastic
response from the community.


One of the findings of the conference for me is
that while the plan is very good, there are
always several points of view, fields of
practice, education and inquiry, and qualities
that may not be represented in the plan, even if
it might be very good or important. But rather
than trying to incorporate them into the plan, I
would place all these directions into a catalogue
that I would return to when recruiting starts. I
have not found any flaws in the plan that would
make me believe that the things I think are most
important could not be implemented in the school
that would be built based on the plan. The plan
is ok, the next steps matter now!


A school that wants to make difference can only
do that with great vision. Such a vision must be
brought to the school by people, and their vision
must be given the space and endorsement it needs
to be realized, even if it is not the same as the
original vision of the plan.

As has been pointed out, it really is a great
opportunity that not many of us can hope to
participate in within our contexts, to be able to
start a new school. I think that the UCI proposal
is a great platform for the project, and that
many visions could thrive on it, as long as the
plan is not set in stone and used to build a set
of predetermined fixed positions that 'qualified'
people are then recruited to. If leaders with
good vision combined with good leadership are
brought in and have enough freedom to follow or
tweak the plan, it will have the chance to be
great.

The institution - being a whole school - will
have to deal with all the issues our discussion
has brought up as it evolves. The discussion
presents an excellent map of the terrain ahead
for those who need to orchestrate the recruiting
process and make the critical selections. From
then on, the new organism will - it must - take
over the search for its own future.

For the rest of us, the 'map' is also very
useful, as we also may participate in
developments that may be less massive, but maybe
even as important, bringing to life and nurturing
something else, maybe a small project that grows
to be a 'movement', that we all benefit from
later.

(So maybe we can all help more consciously in the
'map making', and instead of trying to come up
with what all design should be and what the ideal
school should teach and how, we could try to
build coherence, identify smaller pieces of the
pie (oops, a gastronomic) that combine points
made by like minded contributors into some sorts
of proto-organizations...)


Best regards,

Kari-Hans Kommonen

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Kari-Hans Kommonen, ARKI research group
Media Lab, University of Art and Design Helsinki UIAH
Hämeentie 135 C, 00560 HELSINKI, Finland

email: [log in to unmask]
web: http://arki.uiah.fi
tel: +358 9 7563 0563
fax: +358 9 7563 0555