Dear all,
Returning to Clive Dilnot's post, there are a few things that strike me.
It appears that the "design" of the Japanese reactors was based on several perspectives, for instance; technological concerns, legislation and politics (both sometimes based on scientific research and sometimes on public debate) and financial concerns.
My personal experience comes from being a board member within the E.ON group and having taken decisions on power plant investments, although not nuclear ones. What I learned there is that the "design" of the entire system is seldom carried out by a single person. The power plant is designed by teams consisting of suppliers, contractors and also staff from the energy company. The main supplier (Westinghouse in Japan?) will take a limited responsibility through contracts (legal complexity will not be lesser than the technical). There may be hundreds of contractors, some hired by the main supplier and some by the energy company and some by government/councils. The decision to build it is taken by a board of directors, and the project is presented by the CEO with internal and external experts answering questions. No single person will have the ability/capacity to overview the "whole".
More research on how to conduct these design/investment/construction processes would be a good idea. Hopefully it is possible improve these processes, because in my experience the key stakeholders are not happy with them now. They are, however, seldom regarded as "design" but rather as "investment" and "construction", by the key stakeholders.
At lot of design research is, naturally, considering design in hindsight. In my view it is also instructive to regard the situation when the design is done. For instance what was the tools dealing with earth quake/tsunami in the seventies? How much did people care then?
To explore the design situation we could choose a similar one, but before disaster. It would be very interesting to view design of critical structures in California, given that most experts predict future major earthquakes there. Which scenarios are dealt with? Will these change based on for instance research on tsunamis following indonesia, Chile and Japan? (New knowledge includes for instance that it is more effective to slow the tsunami down using forests rather than trying to block it with concrete walls.) What processes are at play today? And most importantly; what processes could design research recommend?
Perhaps list members in California could arrange a workshop on design of earthquake/tsunami resilient infrastructure in California, that invites a broad set of designers and researchers? I'd come, for sure.
Best Regards
Lars
PS: For those interested in tsunami and design response; here is a link to a short report I wrote when I was in Chile last fall working for the earthquake/tsunami stricken region there.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5185600/Albinsson-Chile.pdf
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16 mar 2011 kl. 18.59 skrev Clive Dilnot:
All,
I am sure we have all noticed references to (failures of or problems with) the "design" of the Japanese nuclear reactors. But what is the status of this term? And how might elucidating what is meant by "design" here throw light on understanding what we are doing?
I put this out as an open question because I don't think there is a pre-conceived answer. Where answering this question becomes important is in regard to how we picture and make claims for design; at extreme, as limited professional field, or conversely as an activity undertaken by all (differently Simon, Papanek, Fry). I have long been dissatisfied by the manichean alternative posed by this model. Does the use of the word 'design" in relation to the operating configuration and disposition (the capabilities) of the Fukushima plant suggest this third road: design as the organization of the potential capabilities of a thing or system?
A second, and not incidental, question is: to what extent does the failure of the Fukushima plant throw up the generic failure of purely technological models of design with respect to the construction, operation and implication(s) of complex systems?
Cheers
Clive
Clive Dilnot
Professor of Design Studies
Parsons School of Design/
New School University
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