Hi again Terry,
You wrote:
"Across the breadth of design fields each has developed their traditions and
meanings for terms and concepts of design. In each, design is typically
defined to reflect the focus of that field (e.g. Chemical process design has
design process like a design process, architecture design defines design
like building components, etc etc.)
Where this leads to in terms of trying to get together an integrated body of
theory on design research, I dunno."
This sends us back to other freezing beef. (By the way, "Stakeholder" is a
wonderful name for a restaurant): Designology.
Tufan Orel in a text published by Victor Margolin and Marco Diani (thanks
Victor) in the CIRA Working papers Nš3 back in 1991 referring to discussions
held in 1989, works the possibility of building a designology that according
to him lacked organization.
Orel considered in the text that the "Though-minded paradigms would evolve
to Tender-minded paradigms "since they include the problems of the
'esthetico-sphere' in the discussions of the biosphere and the technosphere"
(Orel 1991).
I think that this was Orel's ideological proposition core that legitimated
the following vectors for knowledge organization.
I must point out that there are a gigantic realm of human realizations that
are irrelevant or almost irrelevant for the "esthetico-sphere".
Going a bit further and remembering Victor's text in the same publication he
urged a growing scholarly community to engage seriously in the research
disciplines of humanities and social sciences aplied to design. At a certain
point he asked: "What views of the world underlie them [design choices] and
in what ways do designers expect to make a world view manifest in their
work"(Margolin 1991).
Richard Buchanan, possessed by his pluralistic optimism had delimitated the
instances of Design (...) "are artificial objects made by human beings for
practical use, a list which reasonably includes the result of any practical
art or discipline, including management, science, medicine, and engineering,
as Herbert Simon has argued in The Sciences of the Artificial. Excluded from
the list are natural objects - those things caused by nature, without human
intervention-and human action itself, although both of these have important
and obvious relationships to artificial objects."(Buchanan, 1991)
See Terry, Dick agrees with you. But I don't agree with you both and less
with Simon.
18 years after were have we moved?
Where is the esthetico-sphere? We know that it exists. Has it been studied?
Where are the Scholars that Victor claimed? The field have been assaulted by
lumpenacademic and the production is large but dull and mostly useless.
Where is the core of design within the Sciences of the Artifical that Dick's
exhortation seemed to prove to exist and would give Design academics the
world domination in few years?
No wonder then that Clive Dilnot may say, terrifically right in this frame
of mind, that we (design ) must also bare the burden of Holocaust and
Hiroxima. (Dilnot, Archework papers vol 2)
Dear Terry, Although there is a Chemical process design, that is an English
speaking particularity, like Reth Butler that have the design of marrying
Scarlet O'Hara.
Design, the Design worthy of a Designology is the process of producing
things that acknowledges that its original sin was depiction of ideas of
objects to come that Italians called Disegno. Design worthy of a designology
is the process of producing thins that derives from the Arts and especially
from the intellectual attitude and techniques of the arts. Mostly from the
intellectual attitude of the arts.
Recently, Clive Dilnot reminded me a Bonsiepe text "Some Virtues of Design".
He even send me photocopies (thanks Clive) of Bonsiepe magnificent
paraphrases of Italo Calvino's Six Memos for the Next Millenium. In the
Virtue 2, Bonsiepe tells that Ettore Sottsass defined himself as "an
intellectual and cultural operator". That is also why Chemical design as I
imagine it is not worthy of Designology.
But, I think we agree in lots of other things.
Cheers,
Eduardo
Some references:
Buchanan R., (1991) "The Design of Design, Reflections and a Conference
Summary," in Diani, Marco & Margolin, Victor, Eds., Design at The
Crossroads: A Conference Report, Cira Working Papers Series Nš.3,
Northwestern University, Evanston Ill, pp 10-18
Margolin, Victor, (1991) "The Need for Design Studies" in Idem, pp. 25-27
Orel T, (1991) "On the Science of Design or "Designology": Some Propositions
Concerning the Organization of Design Knowledge" in Idem, pp. 32-35
Dilnot, C. (2005) "Ethics? Design?"in Stanley Tigerman (Ed.) The Archeworks
Papers, Volume 1 Number Two, Archeworks, Chicago Illinois, pp 1-149
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