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Dear Clive it seems like a big problem but I'm not sure that it is. By which I mean both at the technical level and at the philosophical level. "Design as the organization of the potential capabilities of a thing or a system" is already what design is. No-one sets out to avoid organizing the potentials of things unless they are deliberately non-designing or designing perversely. How they organize these potentials is perhaps a measure of their understanding of the responsibilities of a designer. Simply expanding the scope of the responsibility of designers is not exhausting the potentials of things. We can go from economic to ecological understandings and conclude that we have done something new. But, both concepts come from the notion of "household". Sure, we can expand our understanding of household and this is what we do. We attempt to accept responsibility for more and more potentials and that is a good thing. But it is not a new thing, or a different thing. When I see that my chair, the one I am sitting in, denies my brother the space I am sitting in, I recognize the potential for displacement in any and all decisions that I take. Then, we could look at contingency etc. cheers keith >>> Clive Dilnot <[log in to unmask]> 03/17/11 4:59 AM >>> 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 Room #731, 7th Floor 6 E16th St New York NY 10011 T. (1)-212-229-8916 x1481