Lauchlan wrote (about a ballistics problem):
> I wouldn't have called this design (as it does not involve any thinking
> about or questioning the context of the problem - that can be taken as
> given), I would have called this problem solving. But I am interested in how
> you are defining boundaries.
I'm with Lauchlan in this and I was uncomfortable with Ken's earlier
assertion that there are tame problems within designing.
Ken's right that designers have to deal with tame problems, but whether
they involve making sure your pencil is sharp or calculating the optimum
"design" for a conventional structure, I don't believe that such routine
and predictable tasks are a part of designing, any more than washing up,
however necessary, is part of the art of a chef.
This brings us back to an old chestnut that we have tussled over before
and I'd like to have a go at resolving it. It's to do with the
difference between designers and engineers, or rather between designing
and engineering. I'll start by saying that I was quite surprised, many
years ago, when I gave a lecture to a group of engineering students, to
find that they had come to the view that "designing" was low-grade
employment compared to what they referred to as "development". I realise
now that their development was close to Lauchlan's designing and their
view of designing was the solving of routinised mathematical problems.
Since then I have discovered wicked problems and I think I now take a
very simple view which is this: Designing is essentially the business of
resolving problems that cannot be tamed, Engineering is the business of
taming problems that have become tameable, at least for the time being
and within some limits.
So there are two quite different and equally difficult arts and, I
suspect, two different temperaments at work. Of course there is no
strict demarkation, people who are designers by instinct will still tame
a problem if it suits them, a natural born engineer will not be averse
to wrestling with a wicked (untameable) problem if one comes their way.
But the tendency of the engineer is to fix things down and hope they
will stay fixed, the designer will be fascinated by the problems that
refuse to stay fixed. Maybe it's as simple as some people like rules and
others don't.
The important thing is self-knowledge. I once met Alex Moulton, inventor
of the small-wheeled bicycle and was stuck by the contradiction in his
outlook. He is a brilliant innovator who is prepared to think very
laterally and, I sense, is driven by an aesthetic passion - whether it
is for an elegant technical concept in the vehicle suspension systems
that he invented (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Moulton) or the
spidery structures of his wonderful bicycles
(http://www.alexmoulton.co.uk/). However he did not acknowledge that
imaginative, artistic streak, instead he claimed that his designs were
the result of pure logic - presenting himself as the perfect calculating
machine, unswayed by emotion, only seeking the most refined reduction of
a mechanical principle.
So, back on with the asbestos suit. Incidentally, I'm off to the EAD
conference in Izmir tomorrow so I hope I'll see some of you there.
Weather forecast is good.
Very best wishes from Sheffield
Chris
*********************************
Prof Chris Rust
Head of Art and Design Research Centre
Sheffield Hallam University
Psalter Lane, Sheffield S11 8UZ, UK
+44 114 225 2706/2682
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www.chrisrust.net
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