Something Wicked This Way Comes (again)
 
I would have thought that we had progressed to a place in designing where
there was agreement (more than less) that so called ³wicked problems² were
the expected standard and that rational well-defined problems were better
represented as sub-problems, easier to define downstream derivatives or
isolatable components - when such makes sense.
 
Rittel in the 70s did disturb our modernist rational notion of problem
solving by pointing to the deeper human complexity of "problems" related to
planning and designing.  Design problems were wicked in a number of ways,
one being their unwillingness to conform to a prevailing narrow
algorithmical conception of problem definition and problem solving.
 
Today, I think it¹s safe to say that for most, wickedness has left the
woodshed and the notion of situated, conditioned, culturally complex
³problems² evolving in heuristic design processes has become the norm.  If
not, I guess that¹s a problem.
 
Additionally, ³problem² is recognized as just one of the many ways that
perceived difference (e.g. between the existing and the preferred) is
cognized. 
 
Problem as a concept carries its own theoretical baggage (pros and cons of
usage, problem types, conceptual limits...) as Klaus continues to point out.
MP in India, for example, prefers the language of opportunity and the
motivation that attaches itself to possibility for cultural reasons.  Some
prefer the language of issues (C. Alexander) because they articulate
unresolved conflicts and tensions.  John Fowles, in the novel Daniel Martin,
describes the artist¹s perception of difference as an absence that needs to
be filled. 
 
Others use narrative to socially construct understandings of existing
conditions and to project desired outcomes.  I¹ve been working with the
vocabulary of valuing because I believe its interest/object conceptual
schema naturally connects inner and outer realms of designing.
 
So, two points worth of opinion:

1. After 35 years, wicked (still fun to say) is a descriptor whose shelf
life has expired, because it has become ­ or ought to have become - the norm
in designing.  For identifiably normative matters, Rittel¹s insight has gone
to the head of the queue.  Now it¹s become wicked to think otherwise.
 
2. No, one can¹t infer the inner circuitry from the artifact.  But there is
inner and deeper inner biology.   In designing, the deep inner biological
circuitry is mediated and made available through cognition.  Amigdalian
(neural-chemical) representations of difference are cognized and shared
socially through language and imagery.
 
This mediation, which is still inner, may not usefully reveal the underlying
biology, but is tied by definition in important ways to outer outcomes of
expressive form.  Understanding this inner process and its outer connections
and consequences beyond anecdote seems worthy to me of Ph. D. level inquiry
and design research.
 
Best to all,

Jerry
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Jerry Diethelm
Architect - Landscape Architect
Planning & Urban Design Consultant

    Prof. Emeritus of Landscape Architecture
           and Community Service € University of Oregon
    2652 Agate St., Eugene, OR 97403
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    €   web: http://www.uoregon.edu/~diethelm

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