Dear Lubomir

Erik and I are already working on a second book titled "Lame Gods" 
following our first "The Design Way". Others on design practice and 
design education are in progress as well. Most importantly we are 
discovering others like yourself who are working on some of the same 
ideas. The intent of the Advanced Design Institute is to link with 
people like yourself to help create a culture of design that infuses an 
understanding of design as a form of strategic intent among societal 
institutions at large.

Harold


On Sunday, April 18, 2004, at 11:28 AM, Lubomir S. Popov wrote:

> Thanks Harold,
>
> I think you made a fine contribution regarding the need of programming 
> and the reconceptualization of design. Although you imply it, I would 
> like to mention again that the key concept that will bring about a new 
> view on design is "(artifact) development process." It can serve as a 
> unifying framework where we can see in social context the places of 
> predesign (including planning and programming), design, construction, 
> and evaluation.
>
> In the example with the museum (we all know what you mean) it is 
> evident that the project lacked a well-developed social and 
> organizational plan which lead to frivolous form-making and a social 
> failure. The problem was in the facility development process, most 
> probably at the stages of organizational design and facility 
> programming or we can also formulated indifferent terms -- in 
> functional programming.
>
> I am eager to learn more about your new ideas and hope you will inform 
> us about your new publications in this regard.
>
> Regards,
>
> Lubomir
>
>
> At 10:55 AM 4/18/2004 -0700, nelsongroup wrote:
>> Dear John et. al.
>>
>> Your last post brought some thoughts together for me that began to 
>> emerge when the discussion turned to design 'programming' and 
>> 'predesign'. Erik Stolterman recently sent me a web site for a 
>> beautiful 'visual thesaurus' with the suggestion that I search 
>> 'design'. A three dimensional network of concepts and terms emerged 
>> that tangentially brought to mind an evolutionary tree diagram 
>> (triggered by your comments on the importance of an evolutionary 
>> perspective).
>>
>> It occurred to me that our understanding of design evolves and has 
>> evolved in the same way that  we believe our artifacts evolve 
>> including our social constructs.  At the moment there are several 
>> active branches in the evolutionary tree of design i.e. design as 
>> craft, as an applied art and design as applied science etc. For 
>> example the conflation of design and science has led to the 
>> development of design as a 'discipline', a subdivision of applied 
>> science—a form of 'techne' (know how)—based on technical knowledge 
>> formulated as method. Design as a form of 'phronesis' (know 
>> why)—pragmatic knowledge—is much less developed. An important point I 
>> discovered working as an architectural designer / programmer and a 
>> teacher of architectural programming, was that programming does not 
>> supply the 'know why', it just attempts to ground the 'know how' in 
>> 'science'.
>>
>> The limits of this evolutionary branch is revealed in the example of 
>> a brand new, multimillion dollar 'museum of art' recently built near 
>> Seattle in the State of Washington. The building was rigorously 
>> 'programmed' to be a museum and was designed by one of America's 
>> leading architectural form-givers. The 'museum' was closed almost 
>> immediately after opening with no certain day for reopening. The 
>> problem was that the 'museum'—the cultural institution itself—had not 
>> been designed and does not exist in reality. The same challenge 
>> confronts other types of designers as well. For example, web 
>> designers discover they need to advocate for the redesign of the 
>> organizations they are tasked to represent on the web. The artifact's 
>> purpose is always embedded in a larger context that is beyond the 
>> scope of programming or predesign as practiced in the US. The design 
>> 'problem' / 'opportunity' is often misrepresented because it is not 
>> developed within this larger context.
>>
>> An emerging branch of design that myself and others are exploring 
>> looks at design as a social institution at the same level as 
>> 'science', 'art', and 'religion' etc. This approach reconstitutes 
>> technical and pragmatic knowledge as an integrated approach to 
>> inquiry and action allowing design the possibility to play a 
>> strategic role in a much broader array of human intentions.
>>
>> Harold
>>
>>
>>
>> Harold G. Nelson, Ph.D., M. Arch.
>> President; Advanced Design Institute
>> www.advanceddesign.org
>
>
Harold G. Nelson, Ph.D., M. Arch.
President; Advanced Design Institute
www.advanceddesign.org
Past-President; International Society for Systems Science
www.isss.org
Affiliated faculty, Engineering, U. Wash.

new book—The Design Way: http://BooksToRead.com/etp/nelsonad.pdf