On 10/17/09 3:59 AM, "Charles Burnette" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
"Ken et al, I offer this as food for thought."
And here I'll add some food from my freezer - probably not word perfectly
remembered.
1. Where Do We Come From What Are We Doing Where Are We Going - Paul
Gauguin painting
2. Ah, love. If thou and I couldst with fate conspire/ To grasp this sorry
scheme of things entire/ We'd shatter it to bits and then/ Remold it closer
to the heart's desire - Omar, Fitzgerald translation, 3rd ed.
3. If we but knew where we were and whither we are tending, we would know
better what to do and how to go about it. - Abraham Lincoln
The formulation does keep showing up.
Chuck wrote: "We live in the present and recognize our needs and desires
here. This present is informed by our past experience and relevant
knowledge." And, "The present looks both to the past and the future."
Yes, but it is an increasingly complex, richly conceived and overlapping
present, which leaves the harder sounding boundaries of the old past,
present, future model feeling a bit too rigid and unresponsive to this
widening/deepening awareness. "New lamps for old." New vocabularies needed
for design thinking?
For me, the most important aspect of what I'll call late-modern design
thinking about the present is its increased self-consciousness - who we are
and how we are in it. The increased awareness of how we are situated in
time, place, language, society and culture. And how that conditions our
interpretations and evaluations of present conditions. More briefly, the
increased significance of the awareness of being situated and conditioned is
critical to the evaluation of "existing situations." That just makes
"benchmarking" harder and more consciously a construction to set against our
socially constructed preferences.
Chuck wrote: "It is not until we attend to the anomalies that arise from
interpreting the present in light of this experiential knowledge that needs
and desires arise to motivate us to address them."
I prefer "difference" to anomalies and "differences that make a difference."
But the point that the "gap" or dissatisfaction or attraction from
difference psychically fuels an ongoing process of adaptation seems right.
Chuck wrote: "That is how our intentions are born and informed according to
at least one theory of design thinking quite familiar to me." And,
"Intentions are always future oriented."
I know that some on this list don't particularly favor the language of
intentions, but I think designing requires vocabularies that allow us to
talk about where we want to go and the way we want to go there. Intentions,
visions, goals, objectives, the entire valuing vocabulary, just happens to
be the most commonly used and widely shared way of doing this in planning
and design conversation.
Jerry
--
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
€ e-mail: [log in to unmask]
€ web: http://www.uoregon.edu/~diethelm
€ 541-686-0585 home/work 541-346-1441 UO
€ 541-206-2947 work/cell
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