Architecture technical methods lecture

Computing as a partner in design

  • Introduction
    • Chris Proctor, assistant professor, LAI
  • What is design?
    • Design as a process of identifying goals and finding solutions.
    • Contrast different design processes
    • Design-based research. (Designing social futures)
      • Yes, engineering solutions.
      • But also better understanding the environment.
  • How can computing serve as a partner in design?
    • In enacting designs (Box 3)
      • Lumion (There is a risk of deadening design by making less-designed alternatives cheaper)
      • The World Park (But you can open up the design space)
      • ChatGPT is coming
    • In exploring and comparing possible solutions within a design space (Box 2)
      • Anahita’s work does a lot of this
      • Gardenplan???
      • Example from qc (A tool to think with…)
    • In better understanding environments (Box 1)
      • DBR / journalism app case study
      • Unfold Studio / analytics
    • Designing social futures
      • True collaboration in Minecraft
  • Conclusion
    • What
    • What might design-based research look like in architecture?
      • Desire paths, but iterated.

  • Relevant research area: Design-based research.

  • What design means in education research

    • Design as a process of identifying and understanding problems/opportunities more clearly and finding solutions to them.
    • Contrast with Architecture
      • Design as creating beauty

  • How might computing participate in design?

    form-giving materiality program

Kinds of design:

  • High design (Big-D design)

    • Form-driven, primary concerns were aesthetic.

  • User-centered design

    • Ethnographic design research

  • Participatory design

  • Engineering design

  • High design (Big-D design)

    • Form-driven, primary concerns were aesthetic.

  • Ethnographic design

  • Participatory design

  • Engineering design

    • Finding the best solution to a given problem.

Who does design?

  • Architecture: Generally, the expert.
  • Education:

What is the goal of design?

Who evaluates design?

  • The market: if it worked.

Ethnographic design research has tended to be more driven by the corporate world, for systems/product design.

“Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones” - Simon “Human beings, viewed as behaving systems, are quite simple. The apparent complexity of our behavior over time is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which we find ourselves.” (Simon, 1969, p. 110)

–> The real complexity is in the model.

“The outcome of Designing is a new meaning, something through which meaning-makers remake themselves” (New London Group, 2000, p. 76)

“curriculum is a design for social futures… Different conceptions of education and society lead to very specific forms of curriculum and pedagogy, which in turn embody designs for social futures.” (p. 73)

“Educators and students must see themselves as active participants in social change, as learners and students who can be active designers—-makers–of social futures… changes in our working lives, our public lives as citizens, and our private lives as members of different community lifeworlds.” (p. 64)

WHAT DO I HAVE TO OFFER?

What do I design?

  • Curricula:

  • What do I do with computing?

    • qc:

  • Design-based research: Unfold Studio

  • Minecraft Utopia?

    • Create the situation

How do I come to understand the environment?

  • Minecraft Utopia. What were we doing here, with this design? The goal wasn’t the kind of house that people ended up building. The goal was “designing social futures.”

  • How do I use computing here?

    • I create the environment.
    • I study the behavior.

What do I design?

  • Enactment: World Park.

WHAT I HOPE ARCHITECTS MIGHT TAKE AWAY

  • More focus on understanding the environment. The quality of the design