Systems Thinking
Shared-Value Creation
Design Leadership
Participatory Design
Building in Time
Focal Things and Practices
Open Source Design
Multidimensionality
Obscure Dependencies
Green Building Materials
Embodied Energy
Energy Sources and Consumption
The Innovation Paradox
Transition Towns
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Important Thinkers
Popular Press - Articles Database
Is an approach to understanding how design interventions operate within larger wholes and contexts. This understanding is critical for leading effective change, but is often absent from design process, practice, theory, and pedagogy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_thinking
Complex and interconnected systems are always the context for architecture and urbanism. These systems encompass, describe and impacting an incredibly diverse set of structures and behaviors that comstantly inform and impact each other. “Feedback Loops” are one of the key concepts of Systems Thinking. Feedback loops describe the way information outputs of a systems return to alter other outputs of a system, creating dynamic structure. For designers to operate effectively we need to understand the nature of the systems are we operate within and how these are interconnect with other systems that constantly alter the ground we work on and in.
It is critical to understand that systems are not “technical” by default but that many social and cultural systems are operating in the architectural arena with at least equally force and syatematicity as so-called technical systems. Language, sub cultures, symbolic action, management, propaganda, regulation, construction, computation, legal, political, familial, and social status are just a few examples of interdependent systems within which architecture and design operate. Systems Thinking offers a way to map out the feedback loops that connect seemingly unrelated intentions, inputs and outputs – a disconnect that tends to plague architecture and design.
Shared Value Creation:
…Starts with long term thinking when it comes to innovation and design, rather than short term payback.
A “shared-value” model for innovation suggests an alternative to the market norms, where the best talent, creative energy and valuable ideas are typically applied to creating economic growth for corporations or financial institutions (sub-systems within the market).
It is generally understood that a capitalist market is a system has, at best, a secondary ability or tendency to redistribute its benefits (increased wealth, efficiency, knowledge, technology) to society and the environment. This distribution is sometimes assisted by government policy or secondary markets. (See “trickle-down economics”). But we often we find that many of the benefits are consumed by the primary subsystems, with limited scraps and negative byproducts (pollution, unemployment, social breakdown, global warming) left for wider distribution.
In a shared-value model, organizations and individuals are incentivized (socially and financially) to “create value” that can be applied or distributed directly to social and ecological systems. In this model some of this value-creation will translate into conventional economic growth. Shared value is a “trickle up” (capillary action) rather than a “trickle down” model. Resources are focused where they are needed, not necessarily where they will generate the greatest financial return. See also Harvard Business Review: http://hbr.org/2011/01/the-big-idea-creating-shared-value/ar/1 Shared value creation is particularly related to “systems thinking,” “design thinking” and “integrative thinking”, and is also related “design as leadership” and the “open source” design processes.
See also: “First, Make Money. Also, Do Good.” – New York Times
By practice and definition, design is a unique form of leadership - whether designers embrace this or not. Design opens up new possibilities, new spaces and new vocabulary to inhabitants and users. Leading by design is an invitation to try something new, quite different than leadership of hierarchy and authority. It is leading by envisioning and then creating new and compelling possibilities, even when these are based on tradition. Design-leadership is leading like the poet, who creates new language to express what we have always felt or known, but do not yet have words to say.
Design has enormous impacts on people and the environment, and designers are complicit in these impacts. Designers share all of the responsibility that accompanies leadership, but we often shy away from this. The design-leader paradigm is offered to help us embrace both the potentials and responsibility for making a meaningful difference in the world.
For more on design leadership see Material Revolution: Re(dis)covered Paradigms for a Transformational Relationship between Architecture, Education and Culture (Writings page)
Is a design methodology and ethos that engages stakeholders in creating design solutions and improvements to a product or system they have an interest in. The term originally referred to the open source code of computer programming, but is now be applied in many design fields. Open source can generate added-value to users through “free” design services. In this model, the added value of design improvements are distributed to a group of participant/stakeholders. One example is a group of software users designing improvements the software without remuneration, but sharing in the utility of the design improvements. Wikipedia is perhaps the best known example, followed by the Linux software platform. Steam Café was an open source design solution involving recipes submitted by the MIT community.
Open source tends to work best in the confines of a community where identity, social status and roles are recognized and become part of the motivation for contribution and effort. Open source works differently than the conventional IP (intellectual property) model where the author/designer/innovator (individual or organization) reaps a direct financial benefits of a new innovation.
Open Source has been credited with solving problems faster, more efficiently and effectively than the conventional ownership model, due to more diverse and robust motivations. There are also many limitations and criticisms of the open source approach. Open source is a particular challenge to designers or firms who require some level of ownership of new ideas in order to market their services, and build a reputation that will allow them to advance professionally and be competitive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
“…is the ability to see complementary relations in opposing tendencies, and to create feasible wholes from unfeasible parts.” [J. Gharajedaghi, 2006]. Multidimensional thinking allows competing values to be mutually present, and even supportive. New “typologies” are found in the overlap of seemingly competing values. Multidimensionality contrasts with the linear “Win-Lose” or “compromise” approach, where an increase in one value or principle is perceived as a corresponding loss in an ‘opposing’ value, such as “justice” and “freedom” or a concern for “stability” and the concern for “change”. Architecture, design and innovation are pursuits in which multidimensionality is particularly critical. A simultaneous “concern for change” and “concern for stability” is paradigmatic of multidimensional thinking, and perhaps the foundation for any mature architectural response.
is a “knowledge-seeking” design process that involves end-users deeply in the creation of new design solutions. This process recognizes that, regardless of design training, stakeholders have tremendous knowledge of the spaces, products, activities and process they work with, and that this must be engaged early in a design process.
To be most successful his process should be facilitated and based on “framing constraints.” This allows participants to prioritize opportunities, and to take ownership of compromises. Participatory design is particularly useful in organizational development and design, where design and leadership decisions have complex impacts on efficiency, performance and job satisfaction. Participatory design process is not necessarily “democratic.” (It does not assume that solutions are by majority vote.) The process requires the highest level of design expertise by the facilitator in order to balance, filter and contextualize the input from end users. For an example see the “Sandbox” design tool in Office Insight
Is the remarkable thesis of architectural historian Marvin Trachtenberg – in his book by the same name. Trachtenberg argues that modern (post-renaissance) architecture broke a longstanding collaboration with time. In Gothic architecture time was an ‘ally’ of design and construction. It used time as a material in its unfolding and as strategy for responsiveness to changing context. Late and post-renaissance architecture on the other hand became “chronophobic” and “chronocidal” – seeking to erase time from the design process. In this new era, design was empowered to birth complete autonomous ‘ideas’ that were then built “against time”, living out their lives in opposition to the ravages of time, weather or adaptations by successive users. This thesis is particularly helpful in understanding the problematic condition of modernity-based architectural and art education that largely conditions our global design subculture. Due to this conditioning millions of designers have been unwittingly saddled with a legacy of authorial entitlement and chronophobia, and this has in turn impacted the industry’s ability to create solutions that are culturally integrated and broadly impactful. This is currently the topic of an upcoming Pilot Projects article.
Describes a condition where our increasingly complex systems, components and relationships are becoming obscured from, and inaccessible to, system end-users. Systems or subsystems that display these characteristic are sometimes referred to as “black boxes”. Obscure dependencies can be intentional or unintentional. They are often linked to increasing efficiency (removing “slack”) from an existing system which has in turn lead to increased complexity. The consequence of obscure dependencies are that systems become detached from human knowledge, skills and ability to intervene, adapt or tinker. Today’s (global/American) financial system, the agricultural system and many corporations are examples of this tendency.
Obscure dependencies can cause systems to “crash” suddenly and unexpectedly, often for unexplainable reasons. Another example is found in the comparison of a Toyota Priuswith an early model VW Bug. Both cars are “systems” that perform similar functions. One system purposefully includes direct user participation (VW) while the other makes user knowledge and participation almost impossible. It took more than a year of investigation to determine the cause of “unexplained acceleration” in the Prius. See: DEGW Insights
Are places, objects, events and spaces that draw people into a more direct and meaningful relationship with one another and their environment. Philosopher Albert Borgmannn describes the concept throughout his writings, using examples such as a shared meal, playing a guitar, hiking in the woods. What distinguishes a focal thing or practice is presence, and an inescapable engagement with time and place. The “things” and “practices” engender and embody an inseparable relationship between physical space, individual participants, a community and a context.
For designers, focal things and practices heightens the potential for physical space, objects, tools and activities to shape culture, values and relationships. At its core is the correlation and balance of body, mind and spirit. This suggests the design of physical environments that engage people holistically and communally. Borgman contrasts this with the dispersive impact of what he calls the “device paradigm” where digital tools and networks become the default source of information, communication and entertainment.
“A focal thing is something that has a commanding presence, engages your body and mind, and engages you with others. Focal things and the kinds of engagements they foster have the power to center your life, and to arrange all other things around this center in an orderly way because you know what’s important and what’s not. A focal practice results from committed engagement with the focal thing. … a guitar is a focal thing — it commands a certain kind of engagement of my body and mind. As I learn to play it(a focal practice), it engages me with the larger tradition of music and the community of musicians. The meal is a focal thing and its preparation is a focal practice. The wilderness is a focal thing and hiking a focal practice. The stream, or the trout, is a focal thing — fly fishing the focal practice. …Preparing and sharing a meal together constitutes a focal practice that has the power to reorient the life of a family…” from “Albert Borgmann on Taming Technology: An Interview”
See Also: Device paradigm
A useful reference/criteria for evaluating the impact of different building materials: From “Ten Shades of Green” by Peter Buchanan
Is the total amount of energy needed to produce the materials and processes we build with. There is a huge variation in embodied energy between one material and the other (+/-200-fold between say wood and aluminum). As reducing the consumption of energy becomes more and more crucial, an understanding of embodied energy must become better integrated in design decision-making. Here is a brief description of Embodied energy: http://www.tenshadesofgreen.org/shade4.html
One way to understand embodied energy is to build something and attempt to map the resource flows at each stage of the process. The difficulty is that many of the energy inputs are shielded from view by at different stages of the work. We believe that the more personal hands-on experience a designer has in physically making things, the more intuitively they will be able to incorporate the conservation of energy in the selection of products, materials and processes.
Energy Sources and Consumption:
This is a powerful snapshot of energy flow in the US over one year - a sobering graphic that highlights how far we have yet to go to create an energy system that is sustainable. Special note should be taken of the inefficiency of electrical power generation as well as the the minuscule amounts of electricity that are currently generated by renewable energy sources like wind and solar. [link to wikipedia graphic] One sensible reaction to this graphic would be to focus on a radical reduction of consumption accross all energy sectors.
Is the theory of a negative feedback loop (see Systems Thinking) created when innovation products work against an innovation process. This is a growing concern as innovation proliferates as a ‘social good’ without a critical view of the impacts of its outputs on our social systems. Many studies show that “innovative products” compromise or displace human environments and behaviors that support creative skills, knowledge and experiences necessary for healthy “innovation ecosystems.” – Download “The Innovation Paradox” (PDF)
Transition Towns draw upon ‘resilience thinking’ and a bottom-up approach to good environmental governance. They promote grassroots, community-empowered action, and permaculture at a local level. The Transition Towns movement became very successful in a small town called Totnes, in the southwest of England, which has since received much media attention, and has been fully embraced by the people in the community. Transition Town Totnes has been a leader in the movement and has inspired Transition Initiatives worldwide.
A Transition Town starts off as a small collection of individuals within a community who come together motivated by a common concern, namely, how can we as a community respond to the challenges and opportunities posed by peak oil and climate change? The Transition Town philosophy looks these challenges squarely in the eye, and aims to prepare the community and the individual for the challenges we will face with the transition from our current high fossil-fuelled lifestyle to a more realistic and sustainable way of life. The goal is to make this imminent reorientation that little bit easier so that we are then more prepared for a peak oil era; therefore, enabling us to rebuild the resilience we’ve lost by depending on cheap oil for so long, and reducing the community’s carbon emissions drastically.
Strategies towards realising this goal include creating a community supported local agriculture system, the implementation of local currency, installation of renewable energy sources to homes and villages, the retro-fitting of buildings, sharing of backyards and gardens for urban agriculture, local recycling schemes, and improved local and sustainable transport public transport systems. Here’s a great TED talk by Robert Hopkins, the instigator of Transition Towns, with thoughts on our transition to a world without oil.
A Few Important Thinkers Currently on our Radar:
Donella H. Meadows: Thinking in Systems
Robert Fulford: The Triumph of Narative; Storytelling in the Age of Mass Culture
Jamshid Gharajedaghi: Systems Thinking: Managing Complexity and Chaos
Russel Ackoff: Human-created systems as “purposeful systems”
Kenneth Frampton: Studies in Tectonic Culture
Albert Borgmann: “Focal Things” (Interview)
Ivan Illich: Tools For Conviviality
Neil Postman: Technopoly; The End of Education
Richard Sennett: The Craftsman; The Culture of the New Capitalism; The Corrosion of Character
Jacques Ellul: The Technological Society
Roger Martin: Reliability versus Validity
Abraham Verghese: “The importance of ritual and physical touch in the medical exam” NPR Interview
Morris Berman: The Twilight of American Culture, 2006: Chapter Four: “The Monastic Option”
Jacob Needleman: “The Inward Work of Democracy” (NPR, “On Being” Interview Transcript)
Lawrence Prusak and John Seely Brown Storytelling in Organizations
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