Imageability without Legibility

The way we build cities today with many signature architecture, along with the criticism of such an approach, is truly indebted to Kevin Lynch's general idea of imageability--the need for a coherent visual order in man's urban environment. This idea of imageability has unfortunately led to a commodification of architecture and its images, which in turn reinforced the specious need to create even more signature work for imagined prestige rather than human concerns. Consequentially, what is achieved is in fact imageability without legibility.

Loss, Continuity and Renewal

Early in the morning today in my bathroom, I heard the birds sing. These were likely the same songs I heard when I was 15; and possibly when I was 25; and always around this time in the morning. Then I suddenly realized that though the song was the same, it could not have been the same bird singing when I was 15, then 25, and now at 35 years old. It would seem that while I was oblivious to the relatively slow passage of my mortality, many generations of birds have passed. The children of the birds I heard when I was 15 were carrying on the same song.

Upon reflection, the sense of continuity for the birds is startling when compared to our much more protracted, profound and complex--though also much threatened--version in human societies.

Spanish Proverb

Lo que separa la civilizacion de la anarquia son solo siete comidas.

(Civilization and anarchy are only seven meals apart)

-From Julian Cribb's The Coming Famine (2010)

On sports car

"I couldn't find the sports car of my dreams, so I built it myself."

--Dr. Ferdinand Porsche

On freedom

"The guarantee of freedom is freedom."

-- Michel Foucault

松尾芭蕉

秋深き

隣は何を

する人ぞ

A refreshing viewpoint: The Enigma of Capital

"Of course this [referring to new social relations radically different from relations of neoliberalization] is utopian! But so what! We cannot afford not to be."

--David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital, (2010), pp. 231

In Remembrance of Aino Paasonen

I received news today that my teacher, Aino Paasonen passed away on July 14, 2010. This is in remembrance of her teaching and contributions to my own learning and life.

* * * *

Sometime during early Fall of 1997 as a second year student at SCI-Arc, I met Aino.

She was amazingly tall, I remember, and spoke with a commanding yet gentle voice. Aino was going to teach all of us in second year writing, and to expose us to thinking in the humanities, she announced.

I did not quite understand then why all of us had to learn writing—all of us could write, of course, or so I thought—or the humanities. After all, isn’t this a school of architecture? I remember resisting Aino’s call with my sketchbook and pen in hand, determined to carry on with my little ‘design’ doodles in her class—in secret and at the back of the large classroom if I had to.

As the warmth of early Fall in Los Angeles trickled away, I soon realized that Aino’s class started at an ungodly cold hour in the morning when no student—habitually after long nights of working—ought to be awake reading long epics of Gilgamesh or Homer. And so I found myself stealing sleep, along with many of my classmates I am sure, in Aino’s class. One of my classmates, whom I shall not name here, labeled Aino’s class, a ‘napping session’—a foolish notion that then, I also concurred foolishly.

Amid her explication of the classics, I was quite certain that Aino was cunningly aware of those of us who were masquerading our design doodling with note-taking, and those of us who were simply snoring away. Despite these clandestine activities going on right under her nose, she had simply refused the easy way out by calling us up. Naively, I had only taken her humanistic sensitivity to our plight as design students for a form of tutorial indifference.

Nonetheless, I remember a few instances when Aino was not too pleased to discover that none of us read what she had assigned. But Aino never left the class in a characteristic angry huff practiced by many teachers; instead, she persevered and improvised her teaching despite our collective betrayal. I do not know if it was my growing guilt or fear or respect—for Aino inspired all—but her class caught on for me amid my secretive doodling and growingly also, unwilling napping.

I remember one episode in Aino’s class vividly: Aino’s recitation of Dante’s Divine Comedy in Italian. I can still hear her voice in my head: ‘listen to this in Italian’. I did not understand a single word she said, nor could I have known then that this was the last I listened to Aino’s recitation of the Divine Comedy. Even so, I remember that her voice was uplifting, and her spirit joyous. It was as if Dante’s words were honey and she was relishing every drop of it. Then, I must have encountered something akin to the intellect richly mixed with poetic love.

* * * *

I could not have realized then the privilege of being taught by Aino, a humanist who understood the need to educate humanistic designers, especially so today amid the great distress and suffering primarily caused by man-made problems.

Although Aino has left the nettles of this world, her legacy for humanism remains. On this, something of the late Aino Paasonen—her humanistic conviction, and her intellectual love—will always stay with me: in memory at Beethoven Street, and in practical actions for today and the future.

Thank you Aino, for your teaching in my own learning and life, and for your contributions to SCI-Arc. Drink with the gods and rest well.

A Short Essay on the Idea of Waste

A Short Essay on The Idea of Waste

by Jeffrey Chan

‘Waste’, ‘trash’ or ‘garbage’—and whatever else you may have that stand for the ‘unwanted’—has always been a part of the human condition. Like us, animals, insects and plants produce waste and avoid their own waste. However unlike us, these living things cannot appreciate the full extent in the idea of waste, nor can they engage with the idea of waste deliberately or productively.

Rightly understood, waste is normally defined as unwanted things; things that are usually also thrown away. To be fair, waste has a stronger valence than either ‘trash’ or ‘garbage’; we tend to conjugate the word ‘waste’ in ways where neither ‘trash’ nor ‘garbage’ is adequate, for example, in ‘industrial waste’, or ‘wasteland’. But at the same time, to use ‘waste’ instead of ‘trash’ or ‘garbage’ also hints of an existential struggle—“I have wasted this!”—as if we try to salvage something before it turns into ‘waste’. In a nutshell, ‘waste’ is a much more ambivalent concept when compared to both ‘trash’ and ‘garbage’.

This is why to simply define ‘waste’ as unwanted things people throw away is also to underestimate the significance and the profound threat lying at the heart of this idea. Interestingly, we are unable to understand ‘waste’ without defining what we actually value. To throw away good drinking water is a waste precisely because we first value water as a perennial good. Similarly, we are also unable to understand ‘waste’ without some kind of a limit: if good drinking water exists in ever infinite supply for everybody, it is hard to imagine how we can be capable of wasting it. And remarkably, we cannot conceive of ‘waste’ without also taking into account the purpose in mind: unless I have an end goal, I am unable to judge that I have wasted my life trying fruitlessly to attain this goal. All these can be recognized as the paradoxes of waste.

While it is unclear if what is valued, limited and purposeful is always never wasted—(one can nonetheless waste one’s limited life doing what seemed to be valued and purposeful)—it seems however clear that waste is paradoxically defined by what we value and treasure most. For this reason, there is always a remote possibility that some of what we actually consider as waste may still be of some value and use.

Beyond the paradoxes of waste, the idea of waste is directly correlated to the idea of production and consumption. In production and consumption, waste at the supply side comes from the fact that natural resources rarely exist in a form suitable for humans’ immediate consumption—there is always a need to transform these raw resources into processed ones and some waste is always inevitable in this process. Furthermore, at the end of the demand chain, such resources often end up as extraneous packaging or empty containers destined for the waste dumps. While there are enthusiastic strategies for ‘closing the loop’ or ‘cradle-to-cradle’ today, these strategies cannot account for the sheer absolute increase in waste that must also correspond to the sheer absolute increase in the number of humans on Earth. In any case, if production and consumption increase, then absolute waste will also increase. Hence it is impossible for global leaders today to seek economic growth by increasing production and consumption while decreasing the volume of waste at the same time. To proclaim the glories of growth without detailing a sustainable strategy to solve its accompanying problem of waste can only be the babbles coming from an inconsistent mind.

This is why waste is without doubt, the singular man-made threat to the human condition in the 21^st century. With some healthy skepticism we may come to discount the severity of global warming; but no amount of skepticism can sway us from the staggering reality of waste. Already, there are flabbergasting estimates: that the largest cities in Asia will produce up to 1.8 million tonnes of waste in the near future on a daily basis.

In this context, managing waste has become a science. Experts in waste management are tormented daily with a range of choices, none too popular or effective, for solving the problem of waste. In certain places people actually pay for what they throw. It has been found that this ‘pay-for-what-you-throw’ has been effective in containing the problem, though it hardly diminishes the problem in structural ways and it is always politically unpopular. On the other hand, the next choice is to expand the infrastructural capacity that has to do with waste disposal. However experts discovered that an increase in the capacity of this infrastructure is nearly always followed by a corresponding increase in the volume of waste. In other words, the convenience of getting rid of waste tends to generate a greater volume of waste. Clearly, while this choice is often politically popular, it however exacerbates the problem. Then there is always the solution of just ignoring the problem of waste. But as a classic example near the Mediterranean Sea showed, it is impossible to ignore waste because it is going to smell (bad).

In light of these realities, some have suggested recycling our waste. However, it is dubious that recycling can ever be an effective solution for the problem of waste. This is because recycling usually means ‘down-cycling’—the recycled resources can only be used for products of a lower specification and virgin resources, which inadvertently also mean producing wastes, are always needed in the production process. Moreover, recycling can lead to the illusion of limitless resources, which inadvertently again, lead to more wastes. Furthermore, recycling is hardly an automated process after our recycling bins have been emptied. If anything else, recycling thereafter takes dedicated administration and line operators to painfully sort through what can be recycled and what cannot by rule of thumb—a process that can hardly be optimized. Thus, recycling can only limit the problem of waste in certain resource categories while opening up new categories of waste (e.g., sludge from inks produced during recycling paper). For all these reasons, recycling cannot be depended as an effective solution for the contemporary problem of waste.

Similarly, many have suggested composting. However again, composting only works for mostly organic matter. In the world of human generated waste, organic waste is perhaps the least of our pressing problem. That said, composting represents a viable way for greatly reducing the amount of waste. The catch however, is that not everyone who is inclined to recycle is also inclined to do composting. This is simply because the composted waste does not disappear along with the garbage truck. Composting is often a slow and smelly business, and not everyone can be persuaded to live with decomposing organic matter. To be sure, at the end one is rewarded with a high quality organic fertilizer. But with nearly half of the world’s population living in urban cities with very little meaningful use for these fertilizers, and with a good proportion of the world’s population living somewhat impatient and busy modern lives, composting cannot possibly be a viable strategy for everyone but only for a group of self-selected greenies.

Given that this is a growing and alarming problem of waste, and given that none of the choices we have so far are even effective for solving this problem, we may think that we are already deeply mired with a very wicked problem. Unfortunately, there is worse news ahead. Not only does the problem of waste lie unsolved; and not only is there no good solution, but also the kind of waste we produced collectively has taken a menacing turn in the recent decades.

In the past people threw out food-scraps, broken pottery and irreparable bits and pieces. But today, people throw out leaking batteries, unfashionable cellphones and wholesale toxic and hazardous biological and industrial wastes. It is sometimes remarked that the archaeologist of the far future will find nothing for our culture today beyond the contaminated fragments that would come to signify our present and wasteful civilization. Tragically, the growing cancer of e-waste, toxic waste and wastes of all type that ought to embarrass a civilized man have spawned a burgeoning underclass of human waste scavengers. These human waste scavengers generally perform the undignified duty of physically disintegrating the things we throw away in order to earn their livelihoods by collecting some precious scraps from this disintegrative process. In this process, they usually absorb some of these toxic wastes into their own bodies before transmitting the externalities of these wastes into their future generations. In other instances, these wastes creep into the water tables for their crops, poisoning them directly before these ‘fresh’ produce are shipped to every other part of the world. In other cases—especially for those who live near incinerators or garbage dumps—the ash and dioxins from burning waste have turned into a living torment for the populace. For these reasons, it is no longer sound to think that we can actually throw anything away in this globalized world; rather, to throw something away today is tantamount to having some of it come boomeranging back at us.

The severity of this problem ought to convince all thinking men and women (and children) to limit the maximal volume of waste to an absolute minimum—the minimum for the dignified survival and flourishing of civilized societies. But what is the minimum for the dignified survival and flourishing of civilized societies? Ineluctably, the logic in this imperative to limit waste also tasks us to consider the reverse of what is being practiced today: that human civilization ought to be steered towards what is minimally required rather than towards what can be maximally acquired. Given that the collective human civilization is being structured towards maximal acquisition and not along the principle of minimal requirement, my question will stand tragically without a responsible answer.

Considering that this imperative is all but nearly impossible today, the next most feasible task is to create a guiding taxonomy for different ideal-types of waste. By this I do not refer to the different kinds of waste, for example, nuclear wastes, industrial wastes, or organic wastes. Rather, I am referring to ideal-types such as the waste-that-is-absolutely-unavoidable (WAU), the waste-that-can-be-reused (WRU) and the waste-that-should-not-be-considered-waste (WNCW) and finally, waste-that-should-never-be-produced (WSNP). The fault for the primitiveness of these concepts is mine alone; but at least I hope that their primitiveness will reveal the clarity necessary for this taxonomy to be useful.

First, lets start with WAU. WAU is waste that is absolutely unavoidable. Without demanding much imagination, we can easily come up with a few—that few which do not belong to polite conversations at the dinner table. Beyond that few there are wastes coming from personal hygiene items and sterilization processes in medical care. The interesting thing is that if we try hard enough (without forcing) to include more artifacts from our daily life in this category, we may come close to answering the earlier question on what is absolutely the minimal for dignified survival and flourishing. This is at least one of the promising qualities of this taxonomy. In any case, WAU is an inflexible category insofar as the human population is concerned. If the world’s population rises, WAU will also increase accordingly.

Second is the WRU. WRU stands as an intriguing category today because its potential is somewhat untested. It is said that a distinguishing trait between the contemporary man and the modern man is that the latter has his cobbler mends his shoes, while the former simply buys another pair. For us to repair and reuse what we normally consider waste, a certain creativity is demanded along with a fair bit of virtuous tolerance for the improvised. Certainly no respectable homeowner would like to see his or her home filled with old shoeboxes improvised as bookshelves, or empty bottles as vases; yet the rationale of WRU asks us to ponder a little before we open the lid of our dumpster to proclaim something as ‘waste’. Simply ask yourself if this ‘waste’ can be repaired, improvised, and reused. For this reason, WRU is also the easiest category for one to tackle the wicked problem of waste—though the economy built on the selling of the new and the next ineffable product is less likely to agree with the rationale of WRU.

Third comes the WNCW. WNCW builds on WRU by asking us to reconsider the different roles our alleged ‘waste’ can take on. Perhaps the unwanted fruit peels can be composted. Or perhaps the used honey jar covered with a thin sticky layer of residual honey should not be condemned as waste but to be filled with warm water, and subsequently consumed and cleaned before recycling the jar. And maybe we should not throw our old Hi-Fi sets out, or those cathode-ray TVs that were imperially granted obsolescence a while ago. The principle of WNCW does not oblige us to turn our homes or our workplaces into junkyards. Rather, in view of the things already consigned to the junkyard that we have now in our midst, it asks us to reconsider our next new purchase—very carefully.

Finally is the WSNP, which stands for wastes-that-should-never-be-produced. The low hanging fruits of this category are the toxic industrial wastes and nuclear wastes—the types of wastes that are neither biodegradable nor civilization-friendly in the long term. On the other hand, the more implicit items in this category are the many frivolities one tends to acquire at a 99cents store for no purpose other than for the fact that they are cheap. I am not an opponent of the 99cents store; but I am a staunch opponent of buying something only to throw them away soon after.

* * * * * * * *

This taxonomy is useful to the extent that it allows for the re-interpretation of waste, and hopefully from that, also a re-caliberation of our attitudes and behaviors towards the waste we produce.

* * * * * * * *

Even so, the idea of waste does not tell us anything about whether we can in fact afford the entity to be wasted. To be sure as I have mentioned earlier, waste is only comprehensible if we also take into account on what is being valued, limitedly available and purposeful. But these paradoxes of waste still do not tell us anything about the affordability of waste in any precise way.

I have one last idea in mind. Let us up the stakes here on this issue. What would you consider as a waste that you can never afford? Think hard for a minute. For me, it is human waste. By human waste, I do not mean the kind of waste that is found to be of bad taste for polite conversations at the dinner table. By human waste, I mean a generation or generations of humankind wasted in order to cope with the problems of waste. Since I cannot afford to waste another human being, born or unborn yet, human waste is the answer to my own question.

Today, we are already witnessing the beginning of human waste. The large underclass of human waste scavengers grows by the year while the problem of waste remains largely unsolved. If it takes a great number of human lives today in order to contain the problem of waste, then I wonder what it would take to cope with this problem in the next 50 or a 100 years’ time? Would our civilization evolve an entire class or sub-culture just to deal with waste? And would countless human beings in the near future devote their lives solely to the mastering of different strategies to struggle with the problem of waste? Because no one can truly want to devote his or her entire life and livelihood to deal with waste, and to commit the lives of his children and grandchildren to the same task—I cannot imagine otherwise—all these must therefore tantamount to human waste.

And so if none of us can ever afford human waste but if human waste is inevitable given this growing problem of waste, what ought we do? The answer, while elusive, lies at the heart of what we will do after reading up a little on the idea of waste.

The Wisdom of a Philosopher

I was wrestling between calling this first blog post for the month of July 'No Determinate Principle for Happiness', or 'The Wisdom of a Philosopher'. After thinking about it, I went for the latter. Here's the passage that I found myself reading and re-reading again:

"Now it is impossible for the most intelligent, and at the same time most powerful, but nevertheless finite, being to form here a determinate concept of what he really wills. Is it riches that he wants? How much anxiety, envy, and pestering might he not bring in this way on his own head! Is it knowledge and insight? This might perhaps merely give him an eye so sharp that it would make evils at present hidden from him yet unavoidable seem all the more frightful, or would add a load of still further needs to the desires which already give him trouble enough. Is it long life? Who will guarantee that it would not be a long misery? Is it at least health? How often has infirmity of body kept a man from excesses into which perfect health would have let him fall!--and so on. In short, he has no principle by which he is able to decide with complete certainty what will make him truly happy, since for this he would require ominiscience."

Immanuel Kant, in 'Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals', 418, 47.

The idea of Interior Elevations

image: St. Vitus cathedral, Prague, Czech Republic

While traveling earlier this month, I revisited the St. Vitus cathedral in Prague. The last I visited St. Vitus was nearly 14 years ago, in 1996, before I started on my architectural education. The building must have looked the same; yet I suppose it was I, who was seeing it again with somewhat different eyes.

* * * * *

I started my journey in architecture gawking at modern buildings. This journey took me through several stages of 'phenomenological spaces' and OMA-que and supermodernism, tossing and turning, before now coming to the Gothic 'style'.

But to define the gothic as a 'style' is grossly misrepresenting. After all, no one really knows who invented this 'style' (i.e., there is no known architect for the Gothic cathedral). It was likely built by trial and error--especially for St.Vitus which is still one of the larger cathedrals around--and it was most likely built by a community of master-builders comprising of masons and craftsmen of different specialties, and designed and built at the same time across generations. In contrast to our swiftly photoshoped, seasonal and ephemeral--faddish--definition of style for real estate today, the Gothic is Architecture.

I must admit this: it is hard to love Gothic architecture. But I attribute this challenge to our present lack of understanding on the construction of these spaces, and perhaps, also to our current estrangement to the divine awe and realities that the Gothic cathedrals embody and represent. Nonetheless, it is still possible to love without knowledge, even if it amounts to a lesser love.

I was just walking along the aisle of this cathedral with my family before I noticed this particular view, at my full standing height, just before the transept of the cathedral. Observe how each line within this composition seems to flow past each other fluidly, hinting of more richness beyond what was actually glimpsed. And each line capable of tying to different points, unifying the entire composition by adjusting one's position slightly...

The bizarre thing about this view is that there was likely no designer who decided that the interior space should look like this at this particular position. In other words, the dynamic composition here was completely un-orchestrated. This realization adds to the awe of gothic spaces: does any designer dare to capture this as an interior elevation in modern, insipid architectural drawings? And if we take this further into speculative territory: is what can be drawn and thus cognitively planned and orchestrated lesser than what cannot be? If the Gothic cathedral can no longer teach us, it continues to question us.

Walking out of a Gothic architecture is like going back into a brighter but a flatter world. In this brighter and flatter world, spaces are bordered by bland planes and wide roads, littered with neon symbols of another god, saying nothing and glittering to nothingness. Awe once again, quickly dissipates.

A quote from Emmanuel Levinas

"It is extremely important to know if society in the current sense of the term is the result of limitation of the principle that men are predators of one another, or if to the contrary it results from the limitation of the principle that men are for each other. Does the social, with its institutions, universal forms and laws, result from limiting the consequences of the war between men, or from limiting the infinity which opens in the ethical relationship of man to man?"

from Ethics and Infinity

即無殃保 何來環保 ?

即無殃保 何來環保 ?

(translated as: 'if plundering and ruin to the Earth is not the status quo, why is there a need for environmentally conscious actions?')

Taichi hand movement in water

The hand movements of Taichi, when executed just below the surface of water, demonstrates that this physical exercise is at one with its central philosophy, and perhaps even a way of practice in life.

Try it. If execute a 'pushing' stance, that is, with your palm flat and pushing the water just below the surface, you can see how great the resistance is. Conversely, if you execute a 'pulling' stance, that is, with your palm relaxed and 'pulling' back the water (with your fingers relaxed and following the flow of the water), you would feel a great natural fluidity. Normally Taichi is not practiced in water. But as far as resistance is concerned, water and air are both fluids that can be used to demonstrate these principles here.

A 'pushing' hand stance is also a striking stance. One strikes an opponent with the palm more or less flat. The force that is exerted is countered with an equal reaction force. But a 'pulling' stance is an accepting stance; one accepts the incoming force and works with that. 'Striking' is far removed from the consciousness in the 'pulling' stance.

I am tempted to imagine from this example that even the physics of this world is hinting to show us a way of life: that if one operates daily with the 'pushing' stance, there is going to be great resistance. It may even be 'unnatural'. But the 'pulling' stance involves acceptance and operating fluidly.

The idea of the Guarantor

The idea of the Guarantor

by Jeffrey Chan

For an idea as important as it is prevalent as the guarantor, it has received surprisingly little attention. By guarantor, I do not refer to the individual who serves to guarantee one’s responsible behavior (e.g., for rent payments). By guarantor, I am referring to the idea for a set of conditions that must exist to ensure the results of one’s actions under uncertainty.

Let me provide an example that will render this idea of the guarantor concrete. For those of us who have followed news on the CERN Collider--buried deep somewhere under the French-Swiss Alps--recent news of its first successful ignition ought to come as excitement mixed with sweet relief. After all, we are set to learn more about the basic fabric of our universe in a laboratory. In the meantime, the world has yet to be consumed by a gnawing black-hole predicted by educated opponents of this Collider technology.

So how does the guarantor fits in here? In this case, the guarantor that guarantees the world as we know it--or in fact even the Universe--from vanishing into either a black hole, or a vacuum decay, is merely the statistical improbability of such an event. As for the opponents and the skeptics, the guarantor that guarantees the world and the Universe safety (at least from human action this way) is to turn that darn Collider off.

Given the clarity conferred by the idea of the guarantor on these two radically opposed realities, I leave you to decide where you stand on the CERN debate. Certainly, the argument is much more complicated than an absolute either/or scenario between existential annihilation or business as usual. Yet one thing is clear: there are few concepts today to guide and evaluate uncertain human actions in large scale system designs. The idea of the guarantor, even though it is blunt, is possibly one of the rare, extant few.

* * * * * * * *

The idea of the guarantor is not new, though it may be unfashionable to check its roots today. As far as I can discern, its prominent roots go back to Kant (1). For Immanuel Kant, one of the central questions that he wrestled with was ‘what ought one do?’. Simply, Kant wanted to know what compelled practical action. For example, upon seeing a lost child seeking his mother, what compels me to help the child? Does helping makes me happy, which is why I inadvertently find myself helping the child? Or is it because helping is a moral act, in which I find myself obeying this moral rule--‘help one who is unable to help himself’?

For Kant, neither simple happiness nor obeying the moral rule is sufficient to serve as the reason behind the practical decision to help. Instead, Kant proposed the idea of summum bonum, or the highest good, as the motivating reason for this practical action. In this summum bonum, it is no longer possible to distinguish between simple happiness and obeying the moral rule; rather, acting morally, or virtuously, is also happiness-seeking at the same time.

But Kant realized that for this highest reconciliatory position as the summum bonum to be possible, he also required a guarantor, which he found in God. In the Critique of Pure Reason, he wrote, ‘Thus without a God and a future world invisible to us now but hoped for, the glorious Ideas of morality are indeed objects of approval and admiration but not springs of purpose and of action’ (2). In other words, unless there is a God that guarantees rewards for goodness (i.e., performing moral actions), there is no motivation, according to Kant, for being good.

And so for the next 150 years or so the idea of the guarantor laid dormant until a young philosopher with very Catholic roots combined with a Pragmatic disposition rediscovered this concept. He is C.W. Churchman (1913-2004), who eventually found himself teaching Operations Research and Kantian philosophy in the business school, as well as a host of other unclassifiable and un-pigeon-holeable subjects in his ‘West’s seminars’ at the University of California, Berkeley. Unlike philosophers who were dug deep in trenches between that of analytic philosophy and that of continental philosophy in his time, Churchman found the no-man’s land of applying his philosophical learning to practical human problems to be most rewarding and fascinating. Naturally, Churchman found himself at the forefront of an un-pigeon-holeable domain comprising of applied ethics, systems design and management thinking. There is still no title for this ‘discipline’ today, though there is every need for it.

Of note, Churchman saw that the practical actions of his day--policy-making, city planning, systems design and development, architecture and urban design: actions that bring novelty into existence--were in fact indifferent from the kind of practical actions Kant talked about: what ought I do?. In retrospect, Churchman’s contributions to the study of complex planning and practical decision-making can be said to be his unique inclusion of theology and teleology while other thinkers of his time were busy subtracting both theology and teleology from their ideas. By theology I do not mean theology with a capital ‘T’--the Theology having to do with postulates about God and divinity--though Churchman came close (along with a few other thinkers) to posit a theology of ultimate system (3) that all decision-makers of complex decisions must take into account. To formulate this in another way, Churchman, like Kant, saw the need to include a purpose (i.e., teleology) within a larger worldview of interacting systems (i.e., theology) for practical action without which actions would be deemed arbitrary, or worse, unethical.

For Churchman, the guarantor is the missing bridge between the purpose of the individual (or the organization) to survive, and the actual realities that can delimit, or even nullify this purpose. Consider a hypothetical example. Assuming that there is a global interest to preserve the Bluefin tuna (not just that our great-grandchildren can have tuna sashimi but that they also will see Bluefin tuna swimming in the oceans (4)), a new global regulatory body is created to regulate the fishing and the consumption of Bluefin tuna. For this new regulatory body to exist, it is therefore necessary to consider aspects of realities that can guarantee its continual existence. One of these realities must be an unconditional global agreement to drastically reduce tuna fishing. However, this unconditional global agreement cannot be guaranteed unless there is also public awareness locally, especially in locations where Bluefin tuna is both a desirable luxury and a traditional staple. But public awareness cannot be guaranteed unless there is also the guarantor of an effective institution of public discourse and education. In Churchman’s words, before long, the guarantor of one system would have unfolded into guarantors of other systems--until they form into something akin to the ultimate system, or what Churchman called, ‘G.O.D’--‘guarantor of destiny’ (5). Only with this guarantor of destiny in mind can this new regulatory body possess a grip on its own destiny, that is, its organizational purpose amid the greater environment.

We will never know where Churchman would deem as the appropriate and practical stopping line for this ever expanding schema of vital guarantors. But I suppose one suggestion is clear: given any design intervention (or a practical action that introduces something new into the world), the better one can see this unfolding picture of different guarantors, the better one can anticipate the design’s environmental problems and issues beforehand.

However, this is not the way conventional design envisioning occurs today. In system designs today, a design vision is usually independently proposed without truly defining and interrogating the conditions that must exist to guarantee the survival of this new design proposal. For example, bold visions for the electric car do not truly question how this new design system can be maintained--even when the world’s sources for lithium, the primary driver of this system platform, are unevenly distributed geographically. And on the corollary, what ought we do with all the newly minted, efficient combustion engine cars now displaced by this new system? And how about all those now redundant petrol stations carrying newly designed, high-octane-number petrols? Wouldn’t there be a coalition of resistance towards electric cars from the stakeholders of these combustion engine cars and petrol stations? Hence, Churchman’s guarantor is useful to the extent that it can compel system designers to question what is necessary and what must be put in place in order for their designs to succeed. Whether designers actually find it useful--or impeding--is of course quite another matter.

Churchman’s guarantor is important in another way: it can help designers evaluate the performances of their design. Consider an example from service design. A five star hotel guarantees a certain standard of service. How do we know if the hotel has delivered on its guarantee? A direct way to answer this question is to see what kind of guarantors the hotel management has put in place, and whether the service performance has met the standards imposed by these guarantors. To check the guarantee of complete satisfaction by its guests, start by checking how unreasonable demands by guests are being handled.

* * * * * * * *

On this, it is possible to say that a sizable portion of our everyday lives is devoted to the maintenance of the institution of guarantors, even though we do not explicitly use the word ‘guarantor’. Take the example of making a promise: my promise to you that I shall do such and such is a verbal guarantee that I would do so. Or consider the example of following a cookbook: if I add such and such an ingredient in this amount and order I am more or less guaranteed a dish resembling the one printed on the cookbook. Or take the example from public service: the government guarantees the effectiveness of this service for her citizens. And on this, we tend to devote the first two decades of a new human life to education, so that this process at least guarantees a level of civility and literacy to maintain and to participate in a democracy. We also try to engage as many stakeholders as possible in complex social designs, so that this encompassing strategy at least guarantees some stability for any newly proposed social institution.

Despite the prevalence and the vital importance of guarantors, we have a diametrically different situation in the world today. Many, if not countless, are likely to agree that there is no such thing as a guarantor in the world today. Given the need to constantly adjust one’s skill sets today, it is no longer possible to guarantee that one’s education is ever completed even after twenty years. And given the hastiness in industrial production today, it is no longer possible to guarantee safety and high quality for every unit produced. And especially after the Financial Tsunamis of 2008 and the subsequent collapse of multiple markets and institutions globally, traditional guarantors, such as stable careers, liquid credit markets and stable governmental services have vanished.

Paradoxically, in this world with radically fewer guarantors than before, there is however a rising number of radically new (system) proposals: novel sources of energy and technologies, and new modes of living, working and communicating. But if we consider that all new system proposals demand the simultaneous consideration of their own guarantors (i.e., subsequently unfolding towards Churchman’s ultimate G.O.D.), then how is it possible that a world with increasingly more new proposals can coexist with one where there is also increasingly fewer guarantors? In other words, by Churchman’s guarantor, isn’t there a practical contradiction today where one is acting more and in ever newer ways without a commensurate level of guarantee that this action will turn out to be more likely good and right, rather than bad and evil (6)?

* * * * * * * *

In this paradox, there is only one possible source of solace. In the movie adaptation of the novel, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, there is a scene in the mines of Moria where Gandalf the wizard and Frodo were talking when Gollum appeared to spy on their conversation. Upon detecting Gollum, Frodo drew his blade and wanted to slay Gollum. But Gandalf intervened by cautioning Frodo not to be so swift in dealing death, for by his intuitions, Gollum still had an unknowable role to play in determining the fate of Middle-earth. To this intuitive insight Gandalf also added that there are forces in existence beyond Good and Evil, such that even the very wise cannot see all ends.

And so in a world where there are increasingly fewer guarantors but more (novel) human actions, the only solace that is left, in the here and now at least, lies in presuming the existence of these ‘forces’ beyond Good and Evil. By these forces, there exists no necessary guarantor that good design intentions will produce good consequences. In fact, most of the time individuals and groups are frustrated even when they try to do ‘good’. Similarly, there exists no necessary guarantor that willful and mischievous design intentions will beget their intended willful and mischievous consequences--frustrations beset the good and evil alike. Unanticipated and undesirable consequences, but also serendipity and pleasant surprises all emerge from efforts to do ‘good’ as well as from attempts to do the ‘mischievous’.

In such a world--if it is in fact that we live in such a world--we can take refuge in the knowledge that the collapse of guarantorship does not imminently signal a collapse of civilization.

Notes:
(1) It is however Descartes who has an earlier account of God as guarantor, where he had to reassure himself that God does not deceive, and hence, his inquiry for truth was guaranteed.

(2) Critique of Pure Reason, B840-841.

(3) In the movie Avatar by James Cameron, Cameron came close to depicting the theology of ultimate system in the flesh. “Ultimate system” is of my own coinage, and this concept describes an all encompassing system made up of different living systems united in one consciousness, and where in Unity it is greater than the sum of its component parts. Cognitively, it is not possible to comprehend the ultimate system, though it is possible to rationally take into account that it exists. For this reason, early thinkers of this theology tend to share similar awe and respect for this picture, which has to be first introduced via rational thoughts but later maintained on faith. Among early thinkers of this theology in the 1960s is Gregory Bateson.

(4) I thank Gerard Yee for his encouragement and his anti-cynical stance on this matter. I suggested that in the failure of CITES, everyone should have their Bluefin tuna fill, to the tragic and absurd consequence made apparent in a world where there will be no more Bluefin tuna for contention. But Gerard suggested otherwise.

(5) Churchman, C.W. (1979). The Systems Approach and its Enemies.

(6) ‘Good’, ‘Right’, ‘Bad’, ‘Evil’, are simply defined as objective deviations (i.e., positive or negative) from the intentions of the designers, whom I presume to have legitimate intentions. Hence ‘good’ means the outcome of the design is aligned with the legitimate intentions of the designer, while ‘bad’ means the outcome is misaligned. ‘Evil’ implies a greater deviation or misalignment.

The Design Thinking Movement and the designing of Lifeworlds

The Design Thinking Movement and the designing of Lifeworlds

By Jeffrey Chan

 

The Design Tsunami

If you have been reading (and seeing) more of the word ‘design’ in recent years, you are not alone. Corporations, companies and even governments around the world are adopting ‘design’ more than ever, finding new homes for this word in old places. Once found only in the technical language of industrial, engineering, graphic, environmental and fashion design, today design has been normalized. Now, careful real estate agents would go to great lengths to tell you who had designed your bathroom seat. Now, school children are able to distinguish between ‘better’ and ‘worse’ cellphone designs. Now, even your experience before a bank-teller or at a Cineplex was likely designed. Confronting the mass normalization of design, one wonders what has not been designed.

The funny thing is that nobody quite knows exactly when the recent buzz surrounding ‘design’ came about. If one is to survey catalogues and media closely associated to what is labeled ‘design’ over a thirty years period following the intense commoditization of design—in fashion, product, graphic, and architecture—the ebb and flow of design has followed economic boom and bust cycle rather closely. For example, there was a proliferation of design before the OPEC oil crisis in the early 70s, and then during the yuppies excess of the 80s before the ‘87 crash. Following this line of thought, the resurgence of design in recent years might have something to do with our own recent Gilded Age.

 

However, one would imagine that the recent market crash that has brought an end to our own Gilded Age, leading to what is now commonly dubbed as the ‘Great Recession’, had decimated design. Surely enough, sectors traditionally associated with design were gravely affected. But design as a cultural force continues to prevail. Why is this so?

 

On this question several factors come to mind. First, globalization has radically transformed design and the design practice (1). While a few important markets have been critically affected by the unprecedented economic downturn, many emerging markets continue to do well. Second, design has been diversifying from its traditional artifactual forms into semantics, interactions, systems and networks (2). Increasingly, design operates in the semantic space of artifacts and interactions that are to some extent, free from the constraints of the physical economy. And third, design is increasingly practiced and operationalized by individuals and groups that are traditionally not directly connected to design. In other words, the universe of design is expanding (3).

 

Indeed, what is most intriguing about the recent design tsunami is how ‘design’ has been expansively conjugated and signified in different ways—for example, such as ‘service design’, ‘experiential design’, ‘organizational design’, ‘design for innovation’, and ‘design thinking’ by individuals who are rarely card-carrying professional designers but public administrators, business gurus, anthropologists, sociologists, managers, educators and medical practitioners.

 

* * * * * * * * *

The Design Thinking Movement

Tim Brown of IDEO is right to say that there is design thinking (i.e., the way a designer thinks) and then there is design thinking (4). The former is the way card-carrying design professionals think. It is also an academic phrase referring to the study of a designer’s reasoning process (5). But the latter is what I would further call the design thinking movement. Powering the expansive presence of design in language, artifacts, services and systems today, the design thinking movement is orchestrating the designing of our lifeworlds.

 

The design thinking movement differs from design thinking proper in three broad ways. First as mentioned, the design thinking movement comprises of many different individuals and groups whom we are unlikely to label as card-carrying designers. Second, the design thinking movement is very likely to concede to a design process that is much more participatory, team-oriented and empirically driven rather than an individuated, cognitive and intuitive process that (traditional) design thinking is more likely to admit. And third, general media often credits the design thinking movement as the vital link between successful companies and their product offerings, for example, in Apple or OXO. In contradistinction, design thinking remains as a small but interdisciplinary academic field studying how designers think (i.e., how the designer reasons).

 

Differences aside, the intriguing question has always been whether the design thinking movement could exist independently without the academic field of design thinking altogether. As far as cross-acknowledgment goes, except for a few references to design thinking—and recurring favorites have always been Horst Rittel’s “wicked problems” and Herbert Simon’s concept of design—key publications rarely acknowledge the presence of this field. It is as though there were two wedding parties going on in parallel with little interaction between them. This may be because the design thinking movement has been preponderantly carried out in the management field. This is however ironic because the idea of ‘wicked problems’, a familiar concept recurring in the design thinking movement (6), was first invoked by C.W. Churchman in the school of business administration at Berkeley in 1967 (7).

 

Nonetheless, it is still never easy to find out exactly when the design thinking movement started, though it is easier to conjecture on where and why it began. If we trace the dates of major publications and observe the career trajectory of key exponents in the design thinking movement, the contemporary design thinking movement started in earnest not long after the dot-com bust. 

 

For many, the dot-com era conjured up images of 30 year olds playing ping-pong at 10am, and a flexible work ethic replacing the rigid time-card. In this work culture, creativity was key, and so was one’s independence and drive to excel. Because many of the dot-coms were also start-up companies, work culture was fluid and improvisational; then, the self-design of one’s work-tasks and the motivation to pursue productive new leads was more important than adhering to executive orders.

 

While many of these new work cultures vanished along with the dot-com bust, what remained as a legacy, and continues to charm and seduce, is the idea of a creative work culture capable of transforming (good) ideas into lots of cash and jobs.

 

* * * * * * * * *

Explaining the Genesis of the Design Thinking Movement

Even so, the legacy of a creative work culture does not adequately explain the rise of the design thinking movement today. To furnish an adequate explanation, we need to further consider the convergence of three ideas: (a) the conjoint doctrines of the post-industrial society and of the (new) creative economy; (b) the historic relationship between industries and (industrial) designers and advertisers in the United States; and (c) the resurgence of the innovation paradigm. 

 

* * * * * * * * *

 

The doctrine of the post-industrial society and the doctrine of the creative economy are two distinct though closely related doctrines. While the former doctrine is a cultural doctrine suggesting the transformation of society from one producing goods to one providing and inventing (new) services, the latter doctrine is an economic roadmap suggesting that it is possible to foster an economy centered around transforming innovative ideas into cash and jobs. While each of these doctrines diverges in their thesis, both converge on the radical idea that it is possible to drive economic development and prosperity through ideas rather than goods.

 

This radical idea would not have come to pass if not for the fact that sometime during the last thirty years, it has become the norm to move production, especially production of goods in the lower-value strata, from major centers of capital concentration in the world to peripheral zones where labor was both abundant and cheap. This phenomenon of outsourcing, doubtlessly exacerbated by an intense deregulatory wave initiated in the 1980s, increasingly hollowed out such centers. Consequentially, such centers were burdened to emphasize management, innovation, service and design over manufacturing and the production of goods. In turn, this transformation set the stage for the creative economy—an economy centered on creating (profitable) ideas and services rather than actual goods for trade; an economy weaned on the creative cerebral rather than the production muscle power. In the midst of all these, the seeds of the future design thinking movement were extant but remained dormant within the ranks of advertising and industrial design industries.

 

Even so, the essence of the design thinking movement has existed for a long time between American industries and the American advertisers and (industrial) designers. One classic example refers to the fierce competition between Alfred Sloan of GM and Henry Ford of Ford Motor Company in the early but saturated automobile market (8). To expand his market share, Sloan created seductive styling and colors with the help of designers and marketed them with the help of creative advertisers. While Ford provided quality engineering and low prices for his stodgy but well-built Model T, Ford’s cars were no match for GM’s cars not only on the basis of styling and colors, but also because GM cars also happened to be appealing for the lady-driver (i.e., no hand-cranking required). The rest as we know is history (or at least up till before the recent debacle).

 

And long before the creative economy, industrial designers discovered research methods that could effectively allowed them to innovate (9, 10). In essence, these methods served a twofold function. One, these methods were capable of providing new user data for the designer such that his design increasingly approximated optimality for the user. And two, the constant flow of such data provided ample opportunities for successive iterations of the designer’s design prototype towards that optimal solution. The ideas of getting to know your users and prototyping are therefore hardly new. In the quest for an optimal solution, the industrial designer has to oversee and balance all of the following criteria, namely performance, merchandising, function, ergonomics, innovation and aesthetics appeal just to name a few. This provided the industrial designer with a perspective to complexity that is rather dissimilar to other fields of design. For these reasons, the design thinking movement today shares a lineage more in line with the culture of industrial design in America rather than say, with fashion or architectural design where in comparison, the designer’s artistic vision is of greater paramount.

 

On this, it is possible to further argue that the design thinking movement today is quintessentially an American innovation. Historically, design thinking took a different form in Europe with the probable exception of Peter Behrens who worked for AEG in Germany. In Europe, design thinking took on a much more polemical role in critiquing material production as well as trying to reconcile the role of the artists with the new techniques of modern industrialization (11). And while national institution that promoted design did exist as early as 1944 in the UK, as I shall discussed later, such an institution was in essence closer to a trade board rather than a school of thought for design. The historic differences underlying the design thinking movement between the two continents persist to the present day, where for example in Italy, (industrial) design is very often performed by architects and the entrepreneurs themselves, and where there is no tradition of performing market-research or user-needs studies before making a design offering in the market (12).

 

Over this long corporate partnership between industries and designers, corporate executives gradually became aware that there was in fact a close compatibility between the innovative methods practiced by the designers and the innovation that is obligated by the ever shortening of product life-cycle in modern production. This requirement (and desire) for innovation in the American society was noted long before outsourcing or psychological obsolescence became the norm (13, 14).

 

Truly, the recent drive for innovation was rooted in the need to expand the supply and variety of goods made possible by new technologies and labor relationships on one hand, and on the other hand, obligated by the strategic shift to compete on the distinguishing mark of design. In other words, in a world saturated with a greater variety of goods all imbued with a drastic reduction in shelf life, corporate executives realized that it is much more strategic to differentiate and to compete through incessant design. But because consumers today are also much more discerning than before, the design of products and services must therefore be equally discerning and accurately targeted to the pluralistic needs and wants of consumers. For this reason, the design thinking movement has also evolved to encompass a pluralistic class of ‘designer-thinkers’ from a variety of disciplines offering a multitude of insights for design—anthropology, sociology, psychology, management, engineering and design—all capable of observing and collecting insights through their own unique vantage point. Christened as the new advisers in the courts of corporate suites and media halls, ‘design thinkers’ quickly turned into the vanguard of strategy and innovation for many design-centered corporations.

 

* * * * * * * * *

The Institutional Demand for Design Thinking

The success of the design thinking movement would have gone unnoticed except for the continuous coverage by notable media such as the New York Times, BusinessWeek, Fast Company, Wallpaper and Monocle over the last decade. In many cases, new branches, sub-sections and dedicated spokespersons emerged to closely monitor trends in the design culture and to interpret these trends for the layperson interested in design. By accentuating the multiple roles of design in successful product offerings, such media reports inadvertently also reaffirmed the vital importance of the design thinking movement to the public. There is after all, a direct correlation between the public’s interest on design and the stock prices of companies creating successful products. And just going by the financial reports of luxury consortium such as LVMH whose marketing thrust remains predominantly in design, consumers in the last decade, likely boosted by high earnings in the stock market, were generally more willing to spend on a greater variety of designed goods compared to any other periods in modern history. For many, the design thinking movement has become a positive, self-reinforcing cycle of converting design innovation into increased corporate earnings.

 

This design thinking movement is however not a phenomenon only confined to the private sector. In recent years, three institutional entities are playing greater roles in the propagation of the design thinking movement globally. These institutional entities are governments, NGOs and the universities.

 

However, the marriage between institutions and design is hardly new. Insofar as the government is concerned, the earliest example must be the Council of Industrial Design, or what is known as the Design Council (UK) today. Started in 1944 by the government to harness the potential of design for wartime Britain, it was perhaps the earliest case where institutional powers directly and explicitly connected design to some notion of the public interest. And in 1953, the Hochschule für Gestaltung, Ulm, was set up as part of the American program for the postwar reconstruction of Germany (15). Initially conceived as a school of social research and political science, it subsequently turned into a school of design. Even so, the subsequent curriculum offered in HfG Ulm, though in design, was heavily laced with the component of social research and science. HfG Ulm was noted for its work with industrial bodies such as Braun and Lufthansa, training a few generations of designers capable and comfortable in navigating the interdisciplinary fields of social research, management and design.

 

Hence, the recent drive towards national institutions whose sole organizational mission is to promote and coordinate design activity—such as the Design Council (UK), the DINZ (Design Institute, New Zealand) and DesignSingapore (Singapore)—is steeped in the long history between governments and design. While each of these institutional units has different contextual duties and mission, all of them converge on the task of promoting design activity, which inevitably also amplifies the design thinking movement today in no small ways. Whether it is actively promoting a culture for design, or an awareness to design or championing design learning, such institutional units for design are also intellectual base-camp for the global circuit of key thinkers, educators and consultants in the design thinking movement. Importantly, these institutional units also advise their respective governments in charting out a roadmap for a creative economy through design.

 

Another institutional group that has gradually seen the workings of the design thinking movement is the NGOs. It is suggested that the delivery of aid and support by NGOs from a top-down position has not been effective (16). This is because without understanding the actual needs and grounds for aid delivery, effectiveness for many NGOs has been compromised. In recent years, key consultants from the design thinking movement have been commissioned to rethink and reinvent the organizational structure and output of these NGOs (17). Departing from the analytical, top-down approach favored by a past generation of NGOs, the newly designed NGOs tend to favor a bottom-up approach featuring self-empowerment and self-help made possible by the signature methods of ethnographic observation and creative reimagination practiced within the ranks of the design thinking movement.

 

Finally, the last institutional group that has embraced and played a role in the propagation of the design thinking movement is the university. Consistent to Herbert Simon’s critique made years ago, many universities have found the idea of design uneasy (18). First, design lacked the intellectual rigor required by the natural and social sciences. Second, design is neither a true academic subject defined by core textbooks nor one where intellectual demarcations could be used to differentiate it from other subjects. Worse, design is neither fully comfortable in the humanities nor within the social science. In short, there is no place for design in the university.

 

It is therefore not surprising to see design appearing as independent units within established universities, for example the Stanford d-school or the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University. And to be precise, these are not design schools, as reputable design schools such as Pratt, Parsons, Otis or RISD are. Instead, these are schools of design thinking. Students of these new schools of design thinking do not graduate with a professional degree in design. Rather, they graduate with traditional disciplinary degrees with (accredited) emphasis in design. Similarly, these are also not schools of design management, where increasingly, it has become the norm to teach design and management hand-in-hand in design specific programs (i.e., ‘the MFA is the new MBA’, or so the mantra goes).

 

How can we further characterize such schools of design thinking? These can be said to be schools championing the confluence of many disciplines working together on challenging problems to realize concrete and human-centered solutions. Realizing that real-world problems are complex and ‘wicked’ (19, 20) and therefore less amenable to be solved through the sequestered silos of the traditional university knowledge structure, schools of design thinking exhorts their students to practice system rather than disciplinary thinking by marrying rigorous empiricism, innovative imagination and aesthetic appeal in the search for design solutions.

 

For this reason, such schools draw much more from the interdisciplinary principles underpinning the design thinking movement rather than from the craft-oriented leanings of traditional schools of design. Given that these schools of design thinking appeared only recently, it is still too early to draw any further conclusion. However one thing is almost certain: that the design thinking movement will continue to evolve because of these schools.

 

* * * * * * * * *

Where is the Design Thinking Movement Heading?

But where is the design thinking movement heading? If it is in fact a movement as I argue, how will it further evolve? And will it expire eventually—like all movements do?

 

There is anecdotal evidence indicating that the design thinking movement—at least as it is being practiced today in the corporate context—is evolving. There are sound reasons to support this view. Firstly, corporate cutbacks have greatly pruned the scale and reach of the design thinking movement. Although still necessary, there is an enormous—if unprecedented—pressure to consolidate operations in the corporate sector today. Inadvertently, this has led to a vast contraction in the market for design thinking services. Secondly, the growing momentum of the sustainability movement is directing the design thinking movement towards more sustainable goals, behaviors and systems (21).

 

Here, it may be useful to propose a further question: to what extent has the design thinking movement—like all productive social movements—contributed to the public interest? All those new product editorials and pictures of lavish architecture, and the explosive growth of media coverage on design related issues have indeed contributed to the growth of public consciousness and awareness on design. But I argue that the design thinking movement has so far missed its central mission: to promote the active deliberation of design in everyday life.

 

To explain this, I will have to make two distinctions. First, thinking is different from thought, which is the product of thinking. Second, thinking is different from ideas, which is a fixation of thought. Truly, thinking is the ongoing, active flow of furthering thoughts and questioning extant ideas. And so while the design thinking movement has richly contributed to the proliferation of design thoughts and ideas with ever newer products and better services, it has not visibly improved the active deliberation of design in everyday life.

 

But what do I mean by the ‘active deliberation of design in everyday life’? By this I mean the following: for everyone who is capable and willing to be informed in design matters to question design motives, artifacts, policies, systems and their corresponding consequences. In other words, the active deliberation of design in everyday life ought to include the following few basic, design-oriented questions: (i) Who designed this artifact, service, policy, or system? (ii) What is his or her or their intentions in this design? (iii) To what extent are these intentions justified? (iv) What are the consequences of this design and are there any (suspected) unanticipated consequences? (v) What are the methods used in attaining the design goal? (vi) Are these methods justified, ethical and sustainable? (vii) Can we live with the consequences of this design and would these consequences affect future generations adversely? (viii) Are there alternatives to what is being proposed? And finally, (ix) Given the answers to the above questions, what empowers my consent or dissent to this design?

 

We catch a glimpse of this practice in a few debates on nuclear energy, where clearly, every informed citizen should be aware of the material and policy designs—and indeed the future repercussions—behind nuclear energy before they support or reject it. Similarly, a snippet of this practice could be caught in the different discourses that emerged on the design of bailout packages and the various economic stimulus policies. In the same way, every product, service, system or network being designed today should be subjected to these design-oriented questions for the sole reason of safeguarding the public interest tomorrow.

 

This then, ought to be the central mission of the design thinking movement—the public thinking on matters of design.

 

Otl Aicher, the co-founder of HfG Ulm and an early dissident during the Nazi regime, knew this mission of design thinking well. In one of his most memorable essays, ‘the world as design’, he wrote,

 

            ‘the world in which we live is the world we made…

making is an activity for which someone is responsible, in which someone is involved with concept, design, execution and checking…

in design, man takes his own development in hand. for human beings, development is no longer nature, but self-development…in design man becomes what he is. animals have language and perception as well. but they do not design.’ (22)

 

‘the world in which we live is the world we made’: it is too important to leave the active deliberation of design in everyday life beyond the capable and able reach of the design thinking movement.

References and Notes:

 

1.      Bruce Mau. (2004). Massive Change.

2.      Klaus Krippendorff. (2005). The Semantic Turn.

3.      The ‘universe of design’ was a phrase used by Horst Rittel. It is also the title of a new book by Jean-Pierre Protzen and Dave Harris (2010).

4.      Tim Brown. (2009). Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation.

5.      Peter Rowe. (1991). Design Thinking.

6.      Roger Martin. (2009). The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage. See also, John Kao. (2007). Innovation Nation.

7.      C.W. Churchman. (1967). Guest Editorial, Management Science.

8.      Giles Slade. (2007). Made to Break.

9.      Henry Dreyfuss. (2003). Designing for People.

10.   C.W. Mills. (1963). Man in the Middle: The Designer.

11.   Ulrich Conrads. (1997). Programs and manifestoes on 20^th-century architecture.

12.   Roberto Verganti. (2009). Design-driven Innovation.

13.   Donald Schön. (1971). Beyond the Stable State.

14.   John Gardner. (1981). Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society. Beyond these mid-20^th century references, it should be noted that Alexis de Tocqueville was probably the first who observed this characteristic.

15.   Kenneth Frampton. (1974). Apropos Ulm: Curriculum and Critical Theory.

16.   Willam Easterly. (2007). The White Man’s Burden.

17.   Tim Brown, (2009).

18.   Herbert Simon. (1996). The Sciences of the Artificial.

19.   Donald Schön. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner. 

20.   Horst Rittel & Melvin Webber. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning.

21.   Tim Brown, (2009). Brown’s account of the Oral-B toothbrush washing up the shore unchanged ought to be retold in every design classroom.

22.   Otl Aicher. (1994). the world as design. 

Notes on Vertical Urban Farming

I was at the City Hall area yesterday when the haughty edifice by architect Moshe Safdie caught my eye. This edifice comprises of three imposing towers standing adjacent to the other towering maybe 60 stories into the air. On their common top straddles a vast, cantilevering plateau of steel and concrete. The next thing that I noticed was its still unadorned, unpainted and likely unfinished skin. Then an idea struck me: what if some of the skin of this vast building complex is used for vertical, urban farming?

* * * * * * * *

Imagine that we have 3,000 buildings in Singapore. Further imagine that each of these buildings is 10 stories high and the height between each storey is 2m. Lets also assume that each building has a linear footprint of 100m. And for simplicity’s sake lets also assume that this footprint is rectangular in shape and with the longer sides measuring 40m each. Hence without including the shorter sides, each building has 40m x 20m x 2 vertical surfaces, which is 1,600 square meters. If we add this number up for all 3,000 buildings in Singapore, then the aggregate number is 1,600 x 3,000, which is 4.8 million square meters.

4.8 million square meters is also 4.8 square kilometers of surface. This is still a tiny number in tiny Singapore with about 710 square kilometers of total land area.

But my calculations are erring on the conservative side. It is likely that we have much more vertical surface aggregating beyond 3,000 buildings of 10 storey each. I take into consideration all the public housing estates, the private estates and most of the commercial, public and private, non-classified buildings in this city-state.

It is in fact worthwhile to discover the exact number. But for argument’s sake lets imagine that my margin of error is 100% lower than the actual number.

If so, then in land-scarce Singapore, we have nearly 10 untapped square kilometers of surface now. This number is sure to increase with a continuous increase in population density. And you know what, as far as air space is concerned, there is no upper limit on this number…

* * * * * * * *

Sometimes ideas are weak and discounted as fictional or unrealistic because they stand in isolation to other ideas. But when these ideas are put together like hands and feet, things can work.

* * * * * * * *

Assuming that we dedicate these 10 square kilometers to intensive, high-yield urban, vertical farming. Lets further assume that about 51% of the citizens buy into this idea and would willingly—and profitably—contribute some of their time in the week (instead of shopping) to organize and work in this effort. Even so, we are talking of 1.6 million people working on this farming venture at any one time—would this not be the largest industry, spurring domestic demand then in Singapore? With a rising grey population and a longer but uncertain retirement livelihood in the world today, urban farming can become a sustainable source of income and psychological fulfillment for the golden years.

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I am not an agricultural expert. But I am an architectural designer who realizes that there is a problem of cladding buildings in plastic, granite and glass when the world is increasingly growing hungrier and (will become) bloodier from food conflicts. While my Hobbesian inclinations are clear, it is also clear to me that only architects and urban designers are trained—with support from public administrators and urban agricultural experts—to provide the aesthetical and technical spatial answers for this growing social and global problem.

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I have grown some tomatoes, potatoes and lady’s fingers successfully (in my garden). From this experience in primary school, I realized that Singapore has a full year of growing season.

Critics of urban farming may suggest that the use of water will surely increase exponentially for water-scarce Singapore. They are right. But equally true is that all vertical urban farms can capture rainwater that is lost right now through run-offs from these vertical surfaces. Imagine that half a centimeter of rain falls daily in Singapore for the whole year. That’s an incredible amount of water that can then be channeled for sustaining these farms.

Besides, depending on how these vertical farms are designed together with the façade, they are likely to reduce heat gain and at the same time, also reduce ambient temperatures. Indeed, these vertical farms present before us is a choice between the positive reinforcing cycle of air-conditioning use, or a negative feedback cycle of reducing air-conditioning use.

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I mentioned earlier that ideas ought to work together. Here we can begin to count the perks of this proposal:

 

(1)  Reduced emissions from food transportation. With a reduced demand for imported food—especially tonnage heavy agricultural products—we also reduce emissions attributed to trucks and planes carrying these products.

(2)  Eating healthier. This is subjective. But with an available local supply of agricultural products we may come to depend less on processed foods and more on natural foods, thereby also cutting down on paper, plastic and synthetic material wastes. This also means major cuts in emissions.

(3)  Hunger is on the rise in the world today. In a soon to be food-scarce world, increasing a domestic supply of food means food security if and when the barn-houses of the world reduce their exports for a near 100% imported-food dependent Singapore.

(4)  It may even be possible to have surpluses from this effort and to export some of these surpluses. With the market for organic agricultural products expanding in the world, vertical farming, because of its proximity to human activity, must be as organic as it can be. Is this not another place to explore the combination of these two ideas: between organic farming and vertical farming?

(5)  Communities in the city-state can be organized into self-sufficient communities specializing in different produce and strengthening local identities and trusts between people. All said, I do not hold onto a romantic ideal of socially edifying agricultural work. What I am suggesting is a much more modest and pragmatic vision where this can become another avenue for community involvement with tangible perks.

(6)  The probability of a universal carbon credit system is high in the near future. When this finally becomes reality, contributors to this system can exchange rebate-credits based on their individual production yields. This serves as an incentive for working in this socially ameliorative ‘industry’.

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What are some of the problems with this vision? Here, I count a few of them:

 

(1)  Not all buildings can be used for vertical farming. For example, buildings with a security nature; or buildings used for communication purposes and so on.

(2)  Architectural conformity. This is not so much a problem as it is still an open question. Architects have always been able to provide answers that have yet to be imagined. Imagine entire housing estates covered with trellis of tomatoes, lady’s fingers and other vegetables…It may strike some as delicious while some may find it a perverted version of the witch’s house in a new Hansen and Gretel story. But because no effort has been expended in envisioning a cityscape like this, there is still ample room for improvement and compromise.

(3)  Free-riding. Like all public goods, there will be some who would literally want to do nothing yet receive the same pay-offs as those who work on these vertical farms.

(4)  Initial high costs from public investment and private cooperation. But if we build it well and if it can last a long time, how is this different from building a subway or an effective airport?

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Many years ago, an American psychologist by the name of Abraham Maslow came up with a hierarchy of needs. For Maslow, food, water and sleep are foundational needs. Luxury, circus and entertainment(-gambling) for him are surely aspiration wants.

All around the world today we see more trade-offs along this trend: competitive advantages in agriculture traded for tourist-inducing golf-courses and thus, foreign exchange; resources that can be invested in sustainable production being consumed rapidly for higher immediate dividends but poorer longer term returns; and finally, a vast material investment in our visual and spatial productions that have nearly no relevance or gravity to the human condition today.

 

If there is preponderant attention paid on aspiration wants today, surely some attention—and vision—ought to be allocated to foundational needs as well?