Ken says we need to generate ideas and solutions on a systems level and i totally agree.
I have been developing ideas for systems oriented design for the last few years.
The idea is that to contribute to the ever more complex and challenging lives we live we need to think further, deeper and wider than what we do today. Thinking about the far reaching concequenses of our actions and how our actions interplay with a complex field of forces at play is called systems thinking. Systems thinking has been developed further the last years and the modern soft approaches fit very well for designers.
In fact i think designers and architects are especially well suited to become great systems thinkers in practice because:
1: Designers have a synthesizing mindset and are used to deal with complex, fuzzy and ill-defined tasks.
2: Designers have great visualization skills for
     a) The visualization of complex information through diagramming and mapping
     b) The designer’s visualization capacity is very central in developing visions for new innovative solutions.
3: Research by Design: The designers are investigating complex issues through visualization and the development of new solutions through design. Thinking, understanding and designing are integrated.
4: The designer’s visualization capacities are very useful in the development of scenarios to test the robustness and resilience of the suggested systems interventions.
5: Design in general embraces many different perspectives, spanning from approaches related to natural sciences, engineering and material technologies, social and inclusive approaches, marked and cultural based perspectives to artistic interpretations. This makes the designers at large and sometimes as individuals especially well suited to cross between, and balance the soft systems thinking with harder systems approaches. 
6. Systems awareness crosses borders and disciplines just as the ultimate systems theory, Ecology, involves many different sciences. Design is by its nature a discipline-crossing activity both when it comes to who one collaborates with and in its variations. Systems thinking is neutral in its nature but it results in the involvement in all aspects a design can be exposed to, from economy to culture.

I look at this not as yet another Methodology but as skills to be trained and i researched this through some semesters here at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design. I have introduced a series of concepts to train systems oriented design as a skill. In fact i believe designers are ampongst the best systems thinkers around.

Somebody (a designer) once said: if you want to save the world go and work on a soup kitchen. Luckily i forgot who said this and i think only the most backwards people in design still think this way. We are in a really good possition to do something that makes a change. We are involved and in direct grips with  the industrial production lines. We have the needed skills. So if we cant make a difference (besides polticians) who can?

Systems oriented design is an exciting, creative, innovative and super interresting turn to design.
But it takes a reconfiguring of design education as Ken mentiones. We need to educate even much more advanced designers who are able to involve in super complex matters.

Forgive my rather raw text here, i am working with publications to share my experiences and concepts ASAP. For now i am looking for people who are interrested in similar ways of approaching these crucial issues. 
I already collaborate with people in Sweden but it would be nice to look into more options for exchange of experiences.

Best
Birger Sevaldson
PhD 
Professor



________________________________________
Fra: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [[log in to unmask]] på vegne av Sukanta Majumdar [[log in to unmask]]
Sendt: 1. juli 2009 13:47
Til: [log in to unmask]
Emne: Re: Betraying the Planet

Dear Prof. Ken,

One request...
Do you have the documents of your University project for Sustainability pusposes?
Is it possible to see them?

Thanks,

Sukanta
India


-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wed, Jul 1, 2009 4:42 pm
Subject: Re: Betraying the Planet



Dear Gavin,

One of the challenges implicit in your comment is that we know what it is that
we are supposed to do.

And then comes the next question: who is it that is supposed to do the doing?

Just this morning, I was at a meeting where the university is working its way
through our response to the challenge of sustainability ... it always amazes me
that there are as many steps as there are to get even a medium sized
organization -- a university -- to orchestrate its efforts on these issues.

On another list, GK VanPatter wrote on this issue in relation to design schools:

"While many graduate design education programs that have embraced
'sustainability' as a theme in designing, most merely treat the theme as content
(WHAT), rather than as a lens through which to engage all kinds of problems and
opportunities, generating ideas and solutions at a systems level (HOW)."

This is another way of examining your comment (and Jan's). To use sustainability
as a lens through which to engage all kinds of problems and opportunities,
generating ideas and solutions at a systems level requires a mapping and
remodeling of nearly everything we do in graduate design education, and to get
there, we much map and model the undergraduate foundations on which we build
graduate education. We have a working group doing just this.

What we already know is that this entails many changes both to education, and to
practice, and even to the way we run our staff structures and our building. To
remodel the undergraduate curriculum from conception to accrediting the new
programs will take us at least three years. Getting everything in place and
tuned will take five to six years. The changes to graduate will run
concurrently, but they cannot run independently. From the time I put
sustainability on the faculty agenda as one of our three cornerstones to the day
that we achieve the goal that GK has stated so well means a time span of seven
to eight years, involving everything from thinking and planning to changing, to
gainin
g approval and accreditation at all levels of the university and the
government, to acquiring and allocating resources, to implementing the program,
testing it, checking it, changing what doesn't work and improving what does.
Perhaps we can trim a year or two off that.

But the notion that we can "just do it" only works in footwear adds.

Now that's just a single organization -- a thousand or so academic and
administrative staff, twenty thousand or so students. Consider the steps it
takes to get an industry to do something -- the design industry, as exemplified
through the efforts of The Designers Accord, working to reorient firms,
practices, and the practices of clients.

The Designers Accord does have a fairly workable program, and this means rapid
progress in some dimensions while permitting easy scalability. But it does not
yet ensure results.

The "just do something" ethos was the motivating factor behind Earth Day, back
in 1969 or so, and the notion that ecology festivals and individual action were
all it would take. The challenge is rebuilding cities, societies, and economies
around the actions required for long-term transformation.

I'm not saying do nothing. I am, in contrast, proposing that it is vital to
think through and create commitment for genuine action leading to significant
results.

Since this requires consensus and commitment across a wide spectrum of actors,
voters, stakeholders, politicians, business leaders, shareholder bodies, banks,
governments, government agencies, intergovernmental organizations, and more, I
still can't see Paul Krugman's article as distraction or endless discussion.

Let's be fair here, too. We've each got to ask what we're willing to do to make
things happen. I've made serious commitments to these issues -- within a range
of available resources. To do more requires consensus among many other actors,
and I find Krugman's article and other articles like it exactly the tool I need
to create that consensus and to generate the commitment we require.
 In fact, it
was a great help to me today in persuading a few key colleagues that
sustainability was more than another word for risk management.

Again, I agree with Ranjan, and Jan, and with you, that we must be active. I'm
simply unwilling to treat a responsible contribution to a major public forum as
endless discussion. Unless, of course, you think that Prof. Krugman would do
more good for the world by discussing price elasticity, foreign exchange rates,
or one of the other topics on which he is well qualified to lecture and to
write. My favorite, of course, would be the economics of increasing returns and
Krugman's critique of Brian Arthur's work.

Look, I don't mean to seem grumpy here -- well, perhaps I DO mean to seem a
little grumpy. Are you really saying that it would be better for Krugman NOT to
use his column in the New York Times to further the public debate on this topic?
Even though a bill has passed the House of Representatives, it has not yet
passed the Senate. Until it passes the Senate, it is not law. Where do you think
Senate votes come from, if voters do not demand Senatorial action, a demand that
is always the product of public debate. If American voters fail to push their
Senators on this bill, it will fail.

So I'd prefer to thank Paul Krugman for keeping this discussion alive, while
doing what I can on the ground to do my part at one university.

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS
Professor
Dean

Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia

--

On Wed, 1 Jul 2009 19:08:08 +1000, Gavin Melles <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

>I think the message about distraction means enough endless discussion just do
something