> From: M P Ranjan <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: 19 August 2005 1:18:16 AM GMT+05:30
> To: Jerome Diethelm <[log in to unmask]>
> Cc: M P Ranjan <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: [PHD-DESIGN] I|d like a copy -- Re: a specific proposal
> that fits?
>
> Dear Jerry
>
> Your description of the Bucky experience is no exaggeration, at least
> from what I remember of my own experience from his visit to NID in the
> late seventies (? - need to check my dates), he conserved his strength
> through the day, looking sharply with his eyes (and mind) at the
> Institute and the city, did not utter a word in casual conversation,
> but in the evening lecture in Ahmedabad went on and on for many hours
> non stop, taking the audience of Ahmedabad on a mind blowing journey
> through the exciting perspectives that he brought to design thinking
> and philosophy. Some of us at NID, faculty and student got together
> and built domes for many months after his visit, with much discussion
> and reading, late into the night.....
>
> About the "problem - solution" debate, I have the following thoughts
> to offer, may be theoretically unsound but here it is anyway.
>
> I have given up, many years ago trying to define design in terms of
> "problem solving", many other professions do that too, and it is not
> necessarily very beneficial in describing and in communicating exactly
> what designers do, either to design students or the industry and
> government clients who know very little about design at all its levels
> of manifestation, especially at the systems level. I have found it far
> more effective and fruitful to talk about locating opportunities and
> in mapping and modeling the contours of these situations without
> really using the word "problem" in the discourse, identify the gaps
> and possibilities. The word "problem", somehow has a very negative
> connotation especially to young students who are literally sent out of
> the Institute campus in search of new assignments to handle in their
> classroom and/or diploma projects, and invariably they used to come
> back with a clutch of very morbid perceptions from the field, (we have
> plenty of problems in India if anyone wants to know about these) and
> the enormity of some of these sometimes discourages the student s (and
> faculty) from even attempting to enter that discourse, very
> disheartening, for a novice and even for the hardened professional.
> However if you ask them to list opportunities for improving what they
> see around them in the city roads, hospitals, schools, shops, malls
> and hotels, and homes, to name a few typical places that they fan out
> to at the beginning of an assignment in design, they come back from
> field observation and brainstorming and discussions, with each other
> and with faculty, with a very long list of possible directions, a germ
> of an idea which they believe is do-able, which in my view is a great
> way to start building "intentions' and then "convictions' to make some
> of these "opportunities" a part of their own career goals, very deep
> commitments indeed, some life-long.
>
> While yes the 'Problems' are there to be 'Solved', we may need to look
> at these from the corner of our sights rather than head-on and then
> feel dejected by the enormity of the perceived task, and not take it
> on at all as a result. Many of our 'problems" are in this category,
> but all these desperately need design, (230 sectors in India in my
> count - Ken and Terry have a longer list) not just the science and
> technology and even marketing spends that are today being funneled
> towards these "problems" in India, particularly when compared to very
> meager design spends which in my view needs to be hugely enhanced
> soon. But that is a long story, for another day.
>
> With warm regards
>
> M P Ranjan
> from my office at NID
> 19 August 2005 at 01.05 am IST
>
> PS: I checked the dates of Bucky's visit to Ahmedabad
>
> Quote from <http://www.amaindia.org/act_popular.html>
> Series on Human in Universe by Dr. R. Buckminster Fuller, the
> well-known geometer, architect, philosopher, and inventor (December
> 15-16, 1978)
> UnQuote
>
> ___________________________________________________________________
>
> Prof M P Ranjan
> Faculty of Design
> Head, NID Centre for Bamboo Initiatives
> Faculty Member on NID Governing Council (2003 -2005)
> National Institute of Design
> Paldi
> Ahmedabad 380 007 INDIA
>
> Tel: 91+79+26610054 (Res)
> Tel: 91+79+26639692 ext 1090 (Off)
> Tel: 91+79+26639692 ext 4095 (Off)
> Fax: 91+79+26605242
>
> email: <[log in to unmask]
> web archive: <http://homepage.mac.com/ranjanmp/>
> __________________________________________________________________
>
>
> On 18-Aug-05, at 12:23 AM, Jerome Diethelm wrote:
>
>> enjoyed seeing the Bucky process again and remembered the last time
>> I heard him speak - as usual for four hours without a break. I’m
>> sure you’ve experienced the unique unfolding of that marvelous mind.
>> I remember him beginning haltingly at first, with a staccato like
>> stuttering of grounding ideas and phrases that left the uninitiated
>> wondering if this was the real Bucky Fuller. We’d all fallen for a
>> fake Andy Warhol and his sidekick Viva in purple boots some years
>> before.
>>
>> But by the second hour, he had once more rebuilt his conceptual
>> world before our very eyes, drawn his audience into it, and was
>> picking up the pace. By the third hour, for those of us with the
>> stamina (and bladders – I was younger then) he was of course fluid,
>> fluent, brilliant, as in radiant, and exceeding the speed limit. At
>> the end of the fourth hour, he scraped us all off the floor and then
>> we went outside and built a dome. Well, OK, I exaggerate a little,
>> but not too much.
>>
>> I always think of Fuller’s “tension and compression always mutually
>> co-exist” when I am asserting that valuing and meaning always
>> mutually co-exist in design (as in interests/matter). And I’m quite
>> sure it’s from his evolution1 - evolution2 that I have drawn what I
>> prefer to call the same continuum: natural selection – human natural
>> selection. I like the special flavor of consciousness, the fruit of
>> the tree, applying it’s own language of evaluating and choosing
>> (selection) backward on its mother matrix. Prototype isn’t always my
>> first choice for describing a formative expression, mainly because
>> its industrial connotations don’t quite fit my work, but why quibble
>> (as in “problem”) and “purposefully” miss the point.
>
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