Texts
- The Problem of Learning
- Problemistics Courseware
- Corso su Problemistica
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Problemistics - Problémistique - Problemistica
The Art & Craft of Problem Dealing
Design
Definition (Reference books)
Definition (Joseph Esherick)
Definition (K.W. Norris)
Definition (R. J. McCrory)
Definition (W.E. Eder)
Definition (S. A. Gregory)
Definition (G. Bonsiepe)
Definition (L. Bruce Archer)
Definition (Edward De Bono)
Definition (Roland Newman)
Definition (W. Pena)
Definition (Ken Baynes)
Definition (Bernhard E. Burdek)
Definition (Herbert A. Simon)
Definition (Richard Neutra)
Definition (Victor Papenek)
Definition (Robin Roy)
Definition (Christopher Jones)
Definition (M. L. J. Abercrombie)
Definition (Susan Lambert)
Definition (Paul Jacques Grillo)
Definition (Pier Luigi Nervi)
Definition (John Dewey)
Definition (Richard Shadrin)
Design as problem solving (L. Bruce Archer)
Design as decision (Richard Buchanan)
Design as communication (W. Ross Ashby)
Function (Richard Neutra)
Function (Victor Papanek)
Function (Herbert H. Schultes)
Form (Victor Papanek)
Types of design (Geoffrey Broadbent)
Design Process (Geoffrey Broadbent)
Design Process (Robin Roy)
Design process (J. Christopher Jones)
Design process (John Luckman)
Process (L. Bruce Archer)
Design and variables (J. Christopher Jones)
Design topics (Herbert H. Simon)
Designer (D.G. Christopherson)
Designer (Herbert A. Simon)
Designer (Richard Neutra)
Designer (Victor Papanek)
Designer (Paul Rand)
Designer (Julius Lengert)
Human being as a designer and the rules of thumb (Christopher Alexander)
Designer and symbols (Paul Rand)
Design whole and components (Herbert A. Simon)
Design and values (Elting E. Morison)
Design and values (Richard Neutra)
Design and participation (Anthony Ward)
Design and civilization (Richard Neutra)
Design and biology (Richard Neutra)
Design and time and space (Richard Neutra)
Design and time and space (J. Christopher Jones)
Design and colour (Richard Neutra)
Design and information (Elting E. Morison)
Design and information (Herbert A. Simon)
Design and information (Richard Neutra)
Design and information (Mickey A. Palmer)
Design and invention (David Pye)
Design requirements of a device (David Pye)
Design requirements (Mickey A. Palmer)
Design requirements (Richard Neutra)
Design requirements (K. B. De Greeme)
Design conclusions (Mickey A. Palmer)
Design criteria (Richard Neutra)
Design criteria (Victor Papanek)
Design criteria (J. Christopher Jones)
Design criteria (Dieter Rams)
Design criteria (Stefan Lengyel)
Design criteria (Fiona MacCarthy)
Design criteria (Christian von Ehrenfels)
Design and knowledge (Elting E. Morison)
Design and knowledge (Richard Neutra)
Ugly and good-looking (Odd Brochmann)
Ugly and good-looking (Dieter Rams)
Design tools (Herbert A. Simon)
Design rules (Odd Brochmann)
Design rules (Victor Papanek)
Design rules (Paul J. Grillo)
Quotations (Varia authors)
[1902-1904] The Encyclopaedic Dictionary, Cassel & Company, London
“The idea formed in the mind of an artist of any particular subject which he transfers to some medium for the purpose of making it known to others; a sketch, a plan, a model, a representation in outline.”
“Crabb thus discriminates between design, plan, scheme and project: the design includes the thing that is to be brought about; the plan includes the means by which it is to be brought about. Scheme and project differ principally in the magnitude of the objects to which they are applied, the former being much less vast and extensive than the latter.”
[1974] Peter Davies, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Dell Publishing Co.
“1. To conceive, invent. 2. To form a plan for. 3. To draw a sketch of. 4. To have as or make for a purpose; intend. - noun 1. The arrangements of the parts or details of something according to a plan. 2. A visual composition, pattern. 3. A purpose; intention; plan.”
[1983, Third Edition] The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
I.1 “Design: A plan or scheme conceived in the mind and intended for subsequent execution; the preliminary conception of an idea that is to be carried into effect by action; a project.”
II.1 “A preliminary sketch for a work of art; the plan of a building or part of it, or of a piece of decorative work after which the structure or texture is to be completed; a delineation, pattern.”
[1985, 5th edition] Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol 18 Macropaedia, Subject: Urban Design
“Design is the imaginative creation of possible form intended to achieve some human purpose: social, economic, aesthetic, technical.”
[1963] Joseph Esherick, Problem of the Design of a Design System, in J. Christopher Jones and D. G. Thornley eds., Conference on Design Methods - London September 1962, Pergamon Press, Oxford
“Design is part of a continuous problem-solving process which follows analysis and provides a part of the basis for future analysis.” (p. 77)
[1963] K. W. Norris, The Morphological Approach to Engineering Design, in J. Christopher Jones and D. G. Thornley, eds., Conference on Design Methods - London September 1962, Pergamon Press, Oxford
“The normal process of designing ... involves problem definition, analysis, synthesis and presentation.” (p. 116)
[1966] R. J. McCrory, The Design Method in Practice, in S. A. Gregory, ed., The Design Method, Butterworth, London
"Design is considered as the process of selectively applying the total spectrum of science and technology to the attainement of an end result which serves a valuable purpose." (p. 11)
[1966] W. E. Eder, Definitions and Methodologies, in S. A. Gregory, ed., The Design Method, Butterworth, London
“Engineering design is the use of scientific principles, technical information and imagination in the definition of a mechanical structure, machine or system to perform prespecified functions with the maximum economy and efficiency." (p. 19) [see G. B. R. Feilden, Engineering Design, London]
[1966] S. A. Gregory, Design and Decision in S. A. Gregory, ed., The Design Method, Butterworth, London
"In its simplest form design is seen as finding the quantity or the dimension, the shape or the material , to fit a carefully specified requirement." (p. 132)
[1967] Gui Bonsiepe in G. Susani ed. Scienza e Progetto, Marsilio editore, Padova
“Il processo di progettazione, inteso come una catena di decisioni, dipende da informazioni in base alle quali possono essere enunciate le decisioni stesse.” (p. 133)
“All’inizio della progettazione sta la registrazione di una necessità ... a volte denominata ‘definizione del problema’.” (p. 137)
[1963] L. Bruce Archer, Systematic Method for Designers, Design magazione, Part two: The nature of designing
“Thus design begins with a need. Either the need is automatically met, and there is no problem, or the need is not met because of certain obstacles or gaps. The finding of means to overcome these obstacles constitutes the problem. If solving the problem involves the formation of a prescription or model for subsequent embodiment as a material object (or requires a creative step) then it is a design problem."
[1983, First ed. 1977] Edward De Bono, Wordpower, Penguin Books, Harmondworth
“A designer is a problem solver who has to shape something to meet some need.” (p. 65)
[1974] Roland Newman, The Basis of Architectural Design, Oxford Polytechnic
“By design I mean an ordering of relationships between components with the objective of obtaining a near optimum solution to a problem to satisfy (predetermined?) objectives.”
[1981] W. Peña in Mickey A. Palmer, The Architect’s Guide to Facility Programming
“The first two steps of the total design process are distinct and separate: (1) programming (analysis) and (2) schematic design (synthesis). Programming is problem seeking and design is problem solving.” (pp. 6-8)
[1976] Ken Baynes, About Design, Design Council Publications, London
“... design is partly a balancing act; a decision on conflicting aims each of which may be desirable in itself.” (Chapter 2, p. 70)
“Design is to do with the right use of resources. Design is about the application of technology to resources so that they can be converted into a physical world that extends mankind’s aspirations and ‘humanises’ nature. Design is to do with resolution of conflicts between people who have varying degrees of access to resources and technology.” (Chapter 6, p. 141)
[1977, First ed. 1971] Bernhard E. Bürdek, Teoria del Design, Mursia, Milano
“Il design viene visto come processo di impiego selettivo dell’intero spettro delle scienze e delle tecnologie nella prospettiva di un risultato da ottenere. Un risultato che costituisce un valore.” (p. 126)
[1988, Second edition] Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge Massachusetts
“The natural sciences are concerned with how things are [declarative knowledge - Akin]. Design on the other hand is concerned with how things ought to be, with devising artifacts to attain goals.” (p. 132-133)
[1978, First edition 1954] Richard Neutra, Survival through Design, Oxford University Press, New York
“Design is the cardinal means by which human beings have long tried to modify their natural environment, piecemeal and wholesale.” “Each design becomes an ancestor to a great number of other designs and engenders a new crop of aspirations.” (p. 5)
[1977, First published 1971] Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World, Paladin, England
“Design is the conscious effort to impose meaningful order.” (p. 17)
[1976] Robin Roy, Design Project Guide, The Open University, Milton Keynes
“Design: any activity which initiates change in man-made things.” (p. 8) (from C. Jones “Design Methods” p. 4)
[1982, First published 1970] Christopher Jones, Design Methods. Seeds of human future, John Wiley & Sons, New York
“... designing should not be confused with art, with science, or with mathematics. It is a hybrid activity which depends, for its successful execution, upon a proper blending of all three and is most unlikely to succeed if it is exclusively identified with anyone.” (p. 10)
[1969] M. L. J. Abercrombie in Geoffrey Broadbent & Anthony Ward eds., Design Methods in Architecture, Architectural Association Paper nº 14, Lund Humphries, London.
“John Weeks has defined designing as putting things together so that they work.” (p. 120)
[1993] Susan Lambert, Form Follows Function? Design in the 20th Century, Victoria & Albert Museum
“Norman Bel Geddes ... defined design as ‘a mental conception of something to be done. A visual design is the organism of an idea of a visual nature so that it may be executed. It is the practice of organising various elements to produce a desired result. Design deals exclusively with organisation and arrangement of form’.”
(p. 45)
[1975] Paul Jacques Grillo, Form Function & Design, Dover, New York
“Design is poetry - from the Greek poiein, to create - insofar as it associates forms into new meanings. The work of the designer is only worth his ability to understand the laws of nature, the character of people and their needs - plus his own ideas and imagination - in short, only as much of a poet as he has in him.” (p. 33)
“We might very well state as a definition that good design is the expression of forms of least effort.” (p. 212)
[1965] Pier Luigi Nervi, On the Design Process, in Gyorgy Kepes ed., Structure in Art and in Science, Braziller, New York.
“The design process ... can be defined broadly as the invention and study pf the necessary methods to achieve a defined goal with maximum efficiency.” (p. 105)
[1979, First published 1934] John Dewey, Art as Experience
“It is significant that the word ‘design’ has a double meaning. It signifies purpose and it signifies arrangement, mode of composition. The design of a house is the plan upon which it is constructed to serve the purpose of those who live in it. The design of a painting or novel is the arrangement of its elements by means of which it becomes an expressive unity in direct perception. In both cases, there is an ordered relation of many constituent elements.” (pp. 116-117)
[1992] Richard L. Shadrin, Design & Drawing, Davis Publications, Worcester, Massachusetts
“Design is visual creative problem-solving and drawing communicates that design.” (p. 30)
[1969] L. Bruce Archer, The Structure of the Design Process, in Geoffrey Broadbent & Anthony Ward eds., Design Methods in Architecture, Architectural Association Paper nº 14, Lund Humphries, London
"The activity of designing is thus a goal-directed activity and normally a goal-directed problem-solving activity." (p. 77)
[1989] Richard Buchanan in Victor Margolin ed., Design Discourse, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago
- “The word [design] is used here [by John F. Pile, Design, Purpose, Form and Meaning, New York, 1979] to mean the making of decisions about size, shape, arrangement, material, fabrication technique, colour and finish that establish how an object is to be made.” (p. 109)
“When asking for the bases of decision in all of the areas that Pile identifies, we are at once caught in a web of human factors, attitudes, and values that are of central concern to rhetoric.” (p. 109)
[1956] W. Ross Ashby, An Introduction to Cybernetics, Chapman & Hall, London
“The act of ‘Designing’ or ‘making’ a machine is essentially an act of communication from Maker to Made and the principles of communication theory apply to it.” (p. 253)
[1978, First edition 1954] Richard Neutra, Survival through Design, Oxford University Press, New York
“Design must serve physiological and social processes. All its activity must be seen as the human way of furthering and continuing life, the life of our species.” (p. 171)
[1977, First published 1971] Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World, Paladin, England
“The ultimate job of Design is to transform man’s environment and tools and, by extension, man himself.”
(p. 32)
[1990] Herbert H. Schultes in Stefan Lengyel & Hermann Sturm, eds., Design Lines Meet in Essen, Ernst & Sohn, Berlin
“Design has the purpose of satisfying both the rational and emotional needs of the humanity. It has a utility function, an aesthetic function and a symbolic function, and if it neglects one of these functions, it becomes unfunctional.” (p. 161)
[1977, First published 1971] Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World, Paladin, England
“Form follows function’, Louis Sullivan’s battle cry of the 1880s and 1890s, was followed by Frank Lloyd Wright’s ‘Form and function are one’.” (p. 19)
[1988, First edition 1973] Geoffrey Broadbent, Design in Architecture. Architecture and the Human Sciences, David Fulton Publishers, London
- Pragmatic Design: by trial and error; (simulations)
- Typological Design: based on typologies; (data base)
- Analogic Design: based on images (analogies) taken from nature, painting, sculpture, etc. (image base)
- Syntactic Design: based on rules. (inferential engine, expert system) (pp. 456-457)
[1988, First edition 1973] Geoffrey Broadbent, Design in Architecture. Architecture and the Human Sciences, David Fulton Publishers, London
Briefing
Analysis (conjectures)
Synthesis (conjectures)
Evaluation
Refutations:
- fit of spaces to activities
- environmental filtering
- cultural symbolism
- economic performance
- environmental impact
Implementation
(p. 467)
[1976] Robin Roy, Design Project Guide, The Open University, Milton Keynes
- “... there seems to be wide-ranging agreement that the basic substructure of design, problem-solving or innovation consists of first a period of widening and exploration of the problem area, secondly, the generation of solutions to the identified key sub-problems, and, finally, narrowing down again to the selection of acceptable and preferred solutions.” (pp. 12-13)
- “... the starting point for the project should be a discrepancy between ‘what is’ and ‘what ought to be’, about which the path for transforming one to the other is doubtful.” (p. 17)
[1982, First published 1970] J. Christopher Jones, Design Methods. Seeds of human future, John Wiley & Sons, New York
Designing as a three-stage process:
- analysis: breaking the problem into pieces;
- synthesis: putting the pieces together in a new way;
- evaluation: testing to discover the consequences of putting the new arrangement into practice. (p. 63)
[1969] John Luckman, An Approach to the Management of Design, in Geoffrey Broadbent & Anthony Ward, eds. Design Methods in Architecture, Architectural Association Paper nº 14, Lund Humphries, London
“The process of design is defined as a decision-making process where the total problem is divided into sub-problems or levels of the process.” (p. 128)
“The process of design is the translation of information in the form of requirements, constraints, and experience into potential solutions which are considered by the designer to meet required performance characteristics.” (p. 128)
The stages [of design] are:
(a) analysis [exploration, divergence]
“The collection and classification of all relevant information relating to the design problem on hand.”
(b) synthesis [generation, transformation]
“The formulation of potential solutions to parts of the problem which are feasible when judged against the information contained in the Analysis stage.”
(c) evaluation [selection, convergence]
“The attempt to judge by use of some criterion or criteria which of the feasible solutions is the one most satisfactorily answering the problem.” “... the stage of evaluation is performing the function of an indicator of satisfactory areas for development at the next level.” (p. 129)
[1969] L. Bruce Archer in Geoffrey Broadbent & Anthony Ward eds., Design Methods in Architecture, Architectural Association Paper nº 14, Lund Humphries, London
“The act of designing consists in:
A) Preparation of a product performance specification
1. agreeing objectives.
2. rating objectives
3. identifying the properties or conditions required by the objectives to be exhibited in the end result.
4. determining the relationships between varying states of the properties and the varying degrees of fulfilment of their respective objectives.
5. establishing the limiting and ideal states of the properties, and hence the domain of acceptability implied by the objectives.
B) Establishment of the design resources
6. identifying the decision variables available to the designer, and the scope of the resources as defined by their limiting states and interrelationships.
7. formulating a model of the goal-decision systems present, linking the decision variables with the properties, and the properties with the objectives
C) Development of design solution(s)
8. Ensuring that the interdependence of the properties constitutes a realm of feasibility and that this lies at least in part in the domain of acceptability.
9. proposing one or more sets of states for the decision variables, within the scope of the resources; establishing the predicted performance(s) (that is to say, the resulting sets of states of the properties); and ensuring that at least one performance lies within the arena defined by step 8
D) Evaluation of design
10. evaluating the merit of the predicted overall performance(s)
11. selecting the optimum solution
12. communicating design description.” (p. 93)
Note: “The design process may therefore be thought of as having three main components:
1. The advance through the project and through time.
2. The branching of the problem into its logical parts.
3. The cyclical movement through the sub-problems. (p. 101)
[1982, First published 1970] J. Christopher Jones, Design Methods. Seeds of human future, John Wiley & Sons, New York
“Clearly the act of identifying the variables (which includes the identification of objectives and of criteria by which good designs are to be recognized) is itself the major difficulty in designing.” (p. 52)
[1988, First edition 1969] Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge Massachusetts
“The evaluation of Designs:
1. Theory of evaluation: utility theory, statistical decision theory.
2. Computational methods: a. Algorithms for choosing optimal alternatives such as linear programming computations, control theory, dynamic programming; b. Algorithms and heuristics for choosing satisfactory alternatives.
3. The formal logic of Design: imperatives and declarative logics.
The search for alternatives:
4. Heuristic search: factorization and means-ends analysis.
5. Allocation of resources for search.
6. Theory of structure and Design Organization: hierarchic system.
7. Representation of Design Problems.” (pp. 155-156)
[1963] D. G. Christopherson, Opening Address. Discovering Designers, in J. Christopher Jones and D. G. Thornley eds., Conference on Design Methods, London, September 1962, Pergamon Press, Oxford
“.. the task of the designer consists essentially of three stages: (a) conception; (b) realization; (c) communication. The designer must first of all have a general plan, a conception, or much better a number of alternative plans, about how a particular result is to be achieved; he must then work out what is required in terms of materials and manufacture to translate this selected conception into practical terms, and then ... he must put the whole thing down on paper, usually in a drawing, in order to communicate it to the people who will have to make the thing and put it into service.” (pp. 2-3)
[1988, First edition 1969] Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge Massachusetts
“The engineer, and more generally the designer, is concerned with how things ought to be - how they ought to be in order to attain goals, and to function. Hence a science of the artificial will be closely akin to a science of engineering - but very differently ... from what goes currently by the name of ‘engineering science’.” (p. 7)
“Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” (p. 129)
“Design ... is concerned with how things ought to be, with devising artifacts to attain goals.” (p. 133)
[1978, First edition 1954] Richard Neutra, Survival through Design, Oxford University Press, New York
“Designers of the future will neither cater to harmful habits, nor gratify arbitrary desires.” (p. 91)
[1977, First published 1971] Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World, Paladin, England
“It is the prime function of the designer to solve problems. My own view is that this means that the designer must also be more sensitive in realizing what problems exist. Frequently a designer will ‘discover’ the existence of a problem that no one had suspected before, will define that problem and then attempt to solve it.” (p. 131)
[1985] Paul Rand, A Designer’s Art, Yale University Press, New Haven
“The designer is confronted, primarily, with three classes of material:
a) the given: product, copy, slogan, logotype, format, media, production, process;
b) the formal: space, contrast, proportion, harmony, rhythm, repetition, line, mass, shape, colour, weight, volume, value, texture;
c) the psychological: visual perception and optical illusion problems, the spectator’s instincts, intuitions, and emotions as well as the designer’s own needs.”(p.4)
“... the designer experiences, perceives, analyses, organizes, symbolizes, synthesizes.” (p. 4)
[1992] Julius Lengert in Bernhard E. Bürde, Design, Mondadori, Milano
“Il designer del futuro progetta sistemi e non oggetti; dà forma a superfici d’uso, non ad apparecchiature. Egli vuole facilità d’uso e non cosmesi di superficie. Integra in una concezione globale tutti i compiti di un sistema.” (p. 170)
[1979] Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building, Oxford University Press, New York
“The only way of acting fast is to rely on the various rules of thumb which he has accumulated in his mind. In short, each one of us, no matter how humble, or how elevated, has a vast fabric of rules of thumb, in our minds, which tell us what to do when it comes time to act. At the time of any act of design, all we can hope to do is to use the rules of thumb we have collected, in the best way we know how.” (pp. 204-205)
[1985] Paul Rand, A Designer’s Art, Yale University Press, New Haven
“The designer’s capacity to contribute to the effectiveness of the basic meaning of the symbol, by interpretation, addition, subtraction, juxtaposition, alteration, adjustment, association, intensification and clarification, is parallel to those qualities that we call ‘original’” (p. 71)
[1988, First edition 1969] Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge Massachusetts
“... several components in every complex system will perform particular subfunctions that contribute to the over-all function.” “To design such a complex structure, one powerful technique is to discover viable ways of decomposing it into semi-independent components corresponding to its many functional parts. The design of each component can then be carried out with some degree of independence of the design of others, since each will affect the others largely through its function and independently of the details of the mechanism that accomplish the function. There is no reason to expect that the decomposition of the complete design into functional components will be unique. In important instances there may exist alternative feasible decompositions of radically different kinds.” (pp. 148-149)
[1974] Elting E. Morison, From Know-how to Nowhere. The development of American technology, Basil Blackwell, Oxford
“The controlling factor in the design problem is what we take the human condition to be”. (p. 4)
“It has to be grounded [the design scheme] in the sense of ourselves as the governing reference point”. (p. 4)
“There seems ... to be a developing mismatch between our extending knowledge of what we can do with the materials and forces in the world around us and our older, but less certain understanding of what we have to do to be ourselves’. (p. 146)
“Having by wit, imagination, hard work, and the best intentions produced a remarkable system for doing things for us, we now, by the same means, have to reach some agreement on what it is we want done”. (p. 161)
[1978, First edition 1954] Richard Neutra, Survival through Design, Oxford University Press, New York
“The common denominator, the proper gauge of value, lies ultimately in biological returns, i.e. the aids and harms to the survival of a given community and to its organic membership.” (pp. 370-371)
[1969] Anthony Ward in Geoffrey Broadbent & Anthony Ward eds., Design Methods in Architecture, Architectural Association Paper nº 14, Lund Humphries, London
User Participation. “This participation can be of two kinds:
(1) Participation before the design solution is reached.
(2) Physical participation after it has been built.” (p. 173)
[1978] Richard Neutra, Survival through Design, Oxford University Press, New York, first ed. 1954
“At the top of evolutionary growth ... civilizations flourish under the conditioning effect of human plan and design.” (p. 326)
[1978, First edition 1954] Richard Neutra, Survival through Design, Oxford University Press, New York
“The far-reaching influence that a new biological knowledge must have on design is quite obvious.” “It will enable us to receive a fairly clear picture of the pathology of design, of the ill effects caused by design miscarriage, even if they are not conspicuous or easily detected. Through the sensory functions or irritations that design elicits, it often disturbs many inner balances and thus manifestly affects our individual well-being.” (p. 316)
“A vast array of normally balanced inner phenomena seems to be potentially and mediately affected by sensory impulses conducted toward the brain.” (p. 317)
“We must get over the notion that design deals only with external objects. Once we recognize that a product of upper brain power called design affects ever-greater portions of the innermost human being, related responsibilities begin to loom before us.” (p. 318)
“1. To ascertain the force of influences of environment affecting the organism generally, not through the senses. Special consideration will be given to stimulations that are man-made or modifiable and therefore within the province of the art of design.
2. To clarify data on specific sensory responses, to show how the many senses work, singly and in ‘stereo gnostic’ combination.
3. To study the relation of such sensory stimulation to an inner somatic equilibrium, which is fundamental to our immediate well-being and our ultimate survival.
4. To study with care conditioned and associated responses elicited in our brain by simple design elements.
- 5. To investigate with ever-greater refinement and dependability the interrelations of all responses, their superpositions, their colligations, configurations, and mutual interferences.” (p. 334)
“To test objects used in such experimentation may be classified in three groups:
1. Specific properties of sensory significance. Shapes, colours, textures, consistencies, and the like, considered in their function as singled-out stimuli.
2. Materials. Substances with which our combined senses habitually deal as complex stimuli such as occur in our constructed environment.
3. Arrangements and compositions. Over-all stimulus combinations, such as a room designed for a specific use, thus involving optical, acoustical, chemical, mechanical, thermal, and other factors. The play on our sensory and central nervous equipment, as well as on our general physiology, occurs for the most part in enlarged and fixed combinations of many ingredients.” (p. 335)
[1978] Richard Neutra, Survival through Design, Oxford University Press, New York, first ed. 1954
“... design of form should be governed by the criterion of the anticipated duration of exposure and appeal.” “A billboard poster, a book, a tombstone - each has different amortization periods; very different approaches to form and arrangement of letters or typographic standards will therefore become appropriate.” “Neglect or disregard of the relevance of the time factor in design is a frequent and yet a fatal sin.” (p. 122)
“Space is the stage on which design performs. But every performance is also contained in time and its results extend within it.” (p. 171)
[1982, First published 1970] J. Christopher Jones, Design Methods. Seeds of human future, John Wiley & Sons, New York
“The change in scale, from physical objects to intangible systems and environments, is also a change from designing-in-space to designing-in-space-and-time.”
“As the scale of designing is increased (from the designing of objects to the designing of systems, programs, flows, communities, and the like) the way things are used, their life-cycles, become as much designed as do their shapes.” (p. xxvi)
[1978] Richard Neutra, Survival through Design, Oxford University Press, New York, first ed. 1954
“Colours should set each other off refreshingly, not only in space, side by side, but also in time, one stimulation following another.” (p. 185)
“Colour perception, like form perception, takes place in the space-time continuum. To treat it in relation to space alone is in itself a defective approach.” (p. 185)
[1974] Elting E. Morison, From Know-how to Nowhere. The development of American technology, Basil Blackwell, Oxford
“... fundamental advances derive only from increases in the amount of information available”. (p. 6)
[1988] Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, second edition
“The quality of design is likely to depend heavily on the quality of the data available.” (p. 169)
“... to associate with every estimated quantity a measure of its precision. Labeling estimates in this way does not make them more reliable, but it does remind us how hard or soft they are and hence how much trust to place in them.” (pp. 169-170)
[1978, First edition 1954] Richard Neutra, Survival through Design, Oxford University Press, New York
“Designing is a nervous procedure par excellence. It will be always highly dependent on the mode of formulation and transmission, the means used to make the idea comprehensible.” (p. 299)
[1981] Mickey A. Palmer, The Architect’s Guide to Facility Programming, The American Institute of Architects, Washington D.C.
- Information about which factors influence the design
- Information about the degree of their influence
- Information about the relations among factors (p. 17)
[1972, First edition 1964] David Pye, The Nature of Design, Studio Vista, London
“Invention is the process of discovering a principle. Design is the process of applying that principle. The inventor discovers a class of system - a generalization - and the designer prescribes a particular embodiment of it to suit the particular result, objects, and source of energy he is concerned with.” (p. 19)
“An inventor’s power to invent depends on his ability to see analogies between results and, secondarily, on his ability to see them between devices.” (p. 67)
[1972, First edition 1964] David Pye, The Nature of Design, Studio Vista, London
- Requirements of use (functionality, strength)
- Requirements for ease and economy
- Requirements of appearance (aesthetics)
[1981] Mickey A. Palmer, The Architect’s Guide to Facility Programming, The American Institute of Architects, Washington D.C.
- efficiency
- effectiveness
- ease of use
(p.18)
[1978, First edition 1954] Richard Neutra, Survival through Design, Oxford University Press, New York
“Any appraisal of design ... has these two vital aspects: the constructivist - how is it made? how can it be fabricated? - and the functionalistic - how will it operate and be used?” (p. 78)
“It is an unfortunate roaming of theory that favours a separation, even an antithesis, of beauty and utility, and places an accent of additive extravagance and uselessness on the first of this pair.” (p. 79)
“Whatever we perceive as ‘beauty’ in nature is never, and in no way, an addition to what we perceive as ‘utility’”. (p. 80)
“It has become imperative that in designing our physical environment we should consciously raise the fundamental question of survival, in the broadest sense of this term. Any design that impairs and imposes excessive strain on the natural human equipment should be eliminated or modified in accordance with the requirements of our nervous and, more generally, our total physiological functioning.” (p. 86)
“Fitness for assimilation by our organic capacity becomes a guiding principle for judging design because such fitness aids the survival of the individual, the community, the race itself. Design must be a barrier against irritation instead of an incitement to it.” (p. 91)
[1976, First edition 1972] K. B. De Greeme, Systems and Psychology, in John Beishon & Geoff Peters eds., Systems Behaviour, Open University Press and Harper & Row, London
“Requirement. A statement of an obligation the system must fulfil to effect the mission. Requirements are expressed first in qualitative terms and progressively in quantitative performance terms relative to some criterion(a).” (p. 127)
[1981] Mickey A. Palmer, The Architect’s Guide to Facility Programming, The American Institute of Architects, Washington D.C.
“Program [Design] conclusions define the issues and present the concepts or precepts that must be addressed in design.” “There are three types of conclusions useful for designer’s purposes: ascertainment, predictions and recommendations.”
“Ascertainments are statements of conditions, processes and events that influence, restrict and/or enhance the facility’s design and that should be accommodated or created. Included in this category are statements about existing conditions that are relevant to design decisions.”
“Predictions are forecasts about the influences of certain factors, projections of future conditions and expectations of the consequences of design decisions.”
“Recommendations are specific directions or proposed actions as to what should be done to accommodate or create desired conditions, processes and events for effective design.” (pp. 21-22)
[1978, First edition 1954] Richard Neutra, Survival through Design, Oxford University Press, New York
“... while there is an immense, a staggering demand for design and for plans all around the globe, really workable, broadly fundamental, and generally acceptable criteria for this gigantic design activity are lacking.” (p. 20)
[1977] Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World, Paladin, England, first published 1971
“... design as a problem-solving activity can never, by definition, yield the one right answer: it will always produce an infinite number of answers, some ‘righter’ and some ‘wronger’. The ‘rightness’ of any design solution will depend on the meaning with which we invest the arrangement.” (p. 19)
“Design must be meaningful.” “The mode of action by which a design fulfils its purpose is its function.” (p. 19)
[1982, First published 1970] J. Christopher Jones, Design Methods. Seeds of human future, John Wiley & Sons, New York
Criteria for Design Project Control
1. Identification and review of critical decisions
2. Relating the costs of research and design to the penalties for taking wrong decisions (‘the penalty for not knowing must exceed the cost of finding out’)
3. Matching design activities to the persons who are expected to carry them out
4. Identifying usable sources of information
5. Exploring the interdependency of product and environment. (pp. 57-58)
[1989] Dieter Rams in Victor Margolin ed., Design Discourse, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago
“One of the most significant design principles is to omit the unimportant in order to emphasize the important.” (p. 111)
“... items should be designed in such a way that their function and attribute are directly understood.” (p. 112)
[1990] Stefan Lengyel, Design, the Bridge between People and Objects, in Stefan Lengyel and Hermann Sturm eds., Design Lines Meet in Essen, Ernst & Sohn, Berlin
“Good Design can therefore be recognized by the fact that all the characteristics features of an object - rational content, emotional effect - form a unity one with another.” (p. 25)
[1979] Fiona MacCarthy, A History of British Design 1830-1970, Allen & Unwin, London
“Design is what makes a thing
- easy to make
- easy to use
- easy to look at.” (Council of Industrial Design) (p. 82)
- “What is good design?” “A product that is true to its material, good in appearance and, above all, fit for use.” (Gordon Russel) (p. 83)
[1916] Christian von Ehrenfels, Höhe und Reinheit der Gestalt (Altezza e Purezza dell’Opera Formale), in B. E. Bürdek, Design
“Le opere più alte si distinguono da quelle inferiori perché contengono una quantità maggiore di unità e varietà (purezza e altezza dell’opera). Il concetto di unitá si richiama all’ordine, quello di varietà alla complessità. L’altezza, dunque, della creazione può essere determinata come prodotto di ordine (O) e complessità (C).
(p. 185)
[1974] Elting E. Morison, From Know-how to Nowhere. The development of American technology, Basil Blackwell, Oxford
“Practice supported only by the knowledge obtained from practice, tends to stay in the same place”. (p. 8)
“In the history of the incandescent lamp at the General Electric Company from 1900 to 1913 there is to be discovered a simple model for the way reciprocal connections between making things and having ideas can do useful work. The model suggests the powerful effects that can be developed when applications are properly set within le mélange de calcul et de physique. It also suggests that one can begin at either end of the process and move toward the other end - from the tungsten filament out to some ‘new scientific principles’ or from those principles back down to the argon bulb”. (pp. 130-140)
[1978] Richard Neutra, Survival through Design, Oxford University Press, New York, first ed. 1954
“Familiarity with brain matter and function is no less important for design that knowing the properties of steel, concrete, and glass fiber for their successful employment.” (p. 206)
[1970] Odd Brochmann, Good or Bad Design?, Studio Vista, London
“Ugly in the absolute sense is ... everything that in respect of intellectual and technical quality has been made with less care and thought than the nature of the task and available skills and resources would have indicated.” (p. 87)
“Ugly in the relative sense is everything that represents an opinion, an attitude to life, from which for certain reasons we desire to dissociate ourselves.” (p. 88)
“Good-looking in the absolute sense is everything which has been made with the care, both intellectual and technical, appropriate to the nature of the task and its place in the whole. Being good-looking presupposes order whether of technical, practical, formal or organic nature, individually or in combination. Degree of beauty can only be registered by comparing performances accomplished under similar conditions and with similar aims.” (p. 89)
“Good-looking in the relative sense is everything that helps to confirm our general ideas of what is right and proper.” (p. 89)
[1989] Dieter Rams, Omit the Unimportant in Victor Margolin ed., Design Discourse, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago
“Good design means as little design as possible. Not for reasons of economy or convenience. Arriving at a really convincing, harmonious form by employing simple means is surely a difficult task.” (p. 111)
[1988, Second edition] Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, M.I.T. Press, Cambridge Massachusetts
“Utility theory and statistical decision theory as a logical framework for rational choice among given alternatives.”
“The body of techniques for actually deducing which of the available alternatives is the optimum.” (p. 137)
[1970] Odd Brochmann, Good or Bad Design?, Studio Vista, London
- economy (parsimony): “... in meeting the requirements of constructional strength the least possible material shall be used.” (p. 14)
- tolerance (in judgement): “You get the most out of products of the past by regarding them all as expressions of the different sides of man’s complex nature; that is, as different sides of one’s own being .... We all go about with a baroque prince inside us, tiny though he may be, and a certain religious sense is aroused in even the godless man when he enters a Gothic cathedral. But since every historical period, including the present, has distinguished itself by a certain one-sidedness ... it is only the collective picture of human development that can be considered in any way adequate.” (p. 77)
[1977, First published 1971] Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World, Paladin, England,
- Method: “The interaction of tools, processes, and materials. An honest use of materials, never making the material seem that which is not, is good method. Materials and tools must be used optimally, never using one material where another can do the job less expensively and/or more efficiently.” (p. 20)
- Elegance: “The particular satisfaction derived from the simplicity of a thing can be called elegance. When we speak of an ‘elegant’ solution, we refer to something consciously evolved by men which reduces the complex to the simple.” (p. 31)
Design is:
- comprehensive (total design, whole, taking into consideration all the factors and modulations necessary to a decision-making process)
- integrated (relations across all the various disciplines)
- anticipatory (envisaging the future, promoting a desired result). (from p. 268)
[1975] Paul Jacques Grillo, Form Function & Design, Dover, New York
“... there must be some kind of basic language of design, regardless of time, culture and country.” (p. 28)
“We will discover that the laws that rule design of any kind are the laws of nature. They all boil down to the fundamental principle of unity that pervades all creation.” (p. 28)
Giorgio Vasari
“Design is the animating principle of all creative processes.”
[1979, First Published 1934] John Dewey, Art as Experience
“That many, perhaps most, of the articles and utensils made at present for use are not genuinely aesthetic happens, unfortunately, to be true. But it is true for reasons that are foreign to the relation of the ‘beautiful’ and ‘useful’ as such. Wherever conditions are such as to prevent the act of production from being an experience in which the whole creature is alive and in which he possesses his living through enjoyment, the product will lack something of being aesthetic. No matter how useful it is for special and limited ends, it will not be useful in the ultimate degree - that of contributing directly and liberally to an expanding and enriched life.”
[1992] Lucius Burkhardt in Bernhard E. Bürdek, Design, Mondadori, Milano
“Non è il nuovo design del tram che ci aiuta ad andare avanti piú velocemente, ma un migliore orario dei trasporti.” (p. 316)
[1972, First published 1953] Morris Kline, Mathematics in Western Culture, Penguin, Harmondsworth
“Design implies the presence of structural patterns, of order, symmetry, and balance.” (p. 522)