Friends,
Lubomir Popov is having trouble posting.
He has written a response to Dori.
I'm passing it on at his request.
Yours,
Ken
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OK Dori,
You get the controversy. I got a little bit of time on my hands and
will both support you and challenge you.
First, with the support.
As a sociologist, I appreciate the interest for social science
disciplines in design. I bank for user research and the scholarly
development of design requirements. Designers need to understand the
users and need somewhat clear vision for user/design requirements. In
this regard, designers need to understand the social world and need
exposure to social sciences.
As a designer (architect) I understand the situations in which
designers need information for decision making, information about the
users. In principle, this happens though out the whole design
process, but the need is strongest in the initial phases, and then,
there might be a spike at the end, if designers engage in building
performance evaluation (sorry, but I will refer mostly to design at
building level).
Now the challenge.
I am trying for 25 years to promote the idea for design programming
(also known as architectural programming and facility programming in
US, briefing in UK). I am not the initiator, I am not the first
person to conceptualize programming. I am indebted to a dozens of
innovators whose path I try to follow. Other collegues have to be
credited with the idea of design programming or pre-design, or as you
like to call it. However, I have very strong interest to promote this
activity to the level that it is institutionalized and
professionalized. I would like to see it as a profession of its own.
I have "business" interests if you like to call it that way. I will
have a clearer niche and better opportunities for definition and
differentiation from the rest of the pack.
If we accept the concept of design programming and situate this
activity at the initial stages of the facility development process, a
lot of pressure on designers will be relieved. Desigenrs can still be
sociologists if they want to, but would not be pressured to make PhDs
in Sociology in order to learn how to do user research. Designers
will need know about social sciences just enough to understand the
program and to interpret it in spatial forms.
I am aware that I generalize. In practice, this clear separation is
productive only in the realm of super projects. For smaller and
traditional projects that are repetitive in time and space, a dual
programmer-designer is more efficient and productive. With repetitive
projects, there is a critical mass of trial and error to advance the
building type and to do programming by building type (guidebook). It
is also possible to apply a participatory design approach and engage,
in what I will call it here, design research. This is design research
for me. The rest is social science research.
The separation and professionalization of programming and design will
allow for programmers to specialize and to do their research work (of
course, there is design decision making even in programming), and for
designers to concentrate on typical design tasks. The amalgamation of
programming and design is often useful, but it is also like the
amalgamation of the professions of civil engineer and architect. It
is difficult to be an expert in both. That is why these activities
are separated and professionalized separately. In some countries,
there are architect-engineers, but I doubt if they often venture to
design the structure of a skyscraper. Houses and small facilities are
just fine for them.
My challenge is about the hybrid profession. In many project
situations the hybrid designer-social researcher will work. I
envisage small to medium projects, well-known, well-researched
project types. In these cases a participatory design approach
combined with design guide approach will be very efficient, quick,
and low-cost. But in the realm of large and complex facilities this
approach would not work. We better specialize in our areas and then
communicate with each other, just like in the Urban Planning teams.
I challenged Mr. Nussbaum assault against the design profession on
that ground. I wrote directly -- do not blame for design failures
poor designers, blame clients who do not want to hire programmers.
These clients kill the programming profession and then no one knows
that there are such consultants/providers. It is a closed cycle that
society is responsible to unwind. There has been absolutely no
response to my post. No one even cursed me. I am still ready to
challenge Mr. Nussbaum and to tell him that it is not the designers
that are failing, it is the society that is not capable to introduce
a better organization of the facility development process.
My positions is: Let designers design and do not overload them with
research activities. Develop a profession to focus on the product
development phases that are loaded with extensive research tasks.
I will stop here because a good and exhaustive argument will take for
ever. My objective is to join your quest for discussion and
controversy.
Kind regards,
Lubomir Popov, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Interior Design Program
School of Family and Consumer Sciences
309 Johnston Hall
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH 43403-0059
phone: (419) 372-7935
fax: (419) 372-7854
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