Fourteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

This workshop, which draws on a graduate course titled Design for Living Complexities, leads participants through activities to appreciate the perspectives below, apply them to possible revisions in their own teaching, and share them with others. We take design to mean intentionality in construction, which involves a range of materials, a sequence of steps, and principles that inform the choice of materials and the steps. Design also always involves putting people, as well as materials, into place. This happens by working with the known properties of people, as well as the known properties of material, and trying out new arrangements to work around their constraints. Critical thinking, as we define it, involves understanding ideas and practices better when we examine them in relationship to alternatives. Design cannot proceed without the idea that there are alternatives to the current way of doing things, even if one has not yet found those alternatives, or have not yet found the best ones, or have not yet been able to put them into practice. In short, critical thinking is in design from the start. For example, one critical thinking theme is to ask, instead of dividing real-world complexities into many local situations, how can we examine “intersecting processes” that cut across scales, involve heterogeneous components, and develop over time?