Hi Terry:
Just to go back a bit and try to clarify things. You wrote:
" In particular, it mutually locates the activities of design
> practice and design research. The focus of design research is to improve
> and
> 'automate' current design practices and skills. This offers the
> possibility
> and opportunity for designers to drop old design practices and to take up
> new, more effective, more advanced, design practices."
As I see it, the history of design activities is exactly this: Every time a
design reasoning process is automated it is therefore transferable,
communicated, commanded to the level of production. So Designers can "go
back" to pure design problems. This creates a funny loop. Any successful
design research, when concluded, ceases to be design research.
Vasari tells us a story about Julius II tomb by Michelangelo:
"Michelangelo told the stone mason to cast a bit here and a bit there in a
way that the stonemason not noticing came to make a figure. When it was
finished, Michelangelo, while the mason looked at it amazed, asked: "What do
you think of it?" The mason answered: "It looks good, and I thank you very
much." Why?"-Asked Michelangelo. Because, by your means I found a Virtue
that I do not know to possess."
(The translation is very loose and the quotation by memory). Michelangelo's
stonemason may be described as an automate.
The very origin of Design may be connected with your statement. Design as a
disciplinary activity may be tracked from the moment on when the awareness
of the separation between design and automation started. In a sense a
designer starts being the "composer", the "editor", the "forecaster" of
automations.
The first step resulting from this secession design/automation is: The
designer can eat at the same table as the prince. The second step is: The
designer can start academia.
My question is: was this that you were thinking about when you wrote: "To
drop old design practices and to take up new, more effective, more advanced,
design practices."?
Best regards from Lisbon, (once the birthplace of a technical revolution),
Eduardo
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