Context
sensibility and modality
distinguish environmental
design from empirical research
Contents
2 Possible, probable and desirable futures
4 Context sensibility, a matter of scale
5 Types of design research and research by design
6 Making a drawing a scientific document
Abstract
In a university of technology, designs are made
(research by design) or examined and evaluated (design research). Making a design, the preliminary
investigation and its conclusion, the programme of demands, only partly direct
the solution. The design does not follow unequivocally and reproductably from a
programme like a scientific prediction of some probable future
from its basic assumptions ceteris paribus. Even with a strict programme, many
alternatives (eventually unexpectable) are possible in
design. This is most explicit in urban and building design. The choice of a
final alternative is more determined by the context of the
object to be designed. The market, the location and the designer (context of
invention) belong to the broader
present and future managerial, cultural, economical, technical, ecological, and
mass-space-time context and its probable change (perspective) of the object. ‘Context’ is different on
different levels of scale and cannot be foreseen completely in the programme.
Even in a
determined context and perspective the number of imaginable alternatives for
buildings, mostly with a long term multifunctional programme of (conflicting)
demands, is unconceivably large, subject to a combinatoric explosion of possible futures.
Probable futures are always possible, but not all possible futures are
also probable. The difference between technical and other sciences is a
matter of modality. Predicting (empirical) research produces probable
futures by counting chance from experience, design produces possible futures,
especially when they are not yet probable, by drawing possible events. Experimental empirical research can also produce unexpected
possible futures, however only because it presupposes the design of the
experiment and its instruments. Any designed or realised artifact can be
studied empirically (impact analysis before or after realization, ex ante or ex
post), but how do we study it, before it is designed? A programme for
(environmental) design can be composed empirically, but it only gives direction
in a limited amount of design-decisions. Otherwise a design would not be a
design, but a prediction. Predicting and designing require different language
games with confusion of tongues between the games. This article represents key concepts from (Jong, Cuperus et al. 2000) the temporary conference version of a book with 40
authors to be published this year and from (Jong
1992). The article ends with some suggestions to make these
concepts operational for design research and research by design. It discusses a
database making designs retrievable as scientific documents concerning their
context, perspective and possible impacts.
Keywords: design
(architectural, urban and technical), research, context sensibility, modality,
scale.
1.a
Introduction
Architectural, urban and technical design of buildings and their settings
are more context-sensible than other technical arts. That raises a methodological
problem of scientific generalization, well known also in ecology as a
context-science pre-eminently (Pianka
1994) and in management sciences(Riemsdijk 1999). How to scientify something so elusive as ‘context’
as set of conditions of possibility?
This article is written in the language game of the ‘possible’,
containing the narrower ‘probable’. It stresses conditions instead of causes. A
cause is always a condition something to happen, but not every condition is also
a cause. So the foundation of a building could be a condition of the building,
but not its cause. The combinatorial explosion of possible forms even within
one strict urban or architectural empirically produced program, raises a
problem in that sense. It is also the problem of naming and describing the
innumerable possible results of design and consequently the problem of their
retrievability. A Windows-icon of 16x16 pixels with 256 colors makes possible
much more pictures (256256) than there are atoms in the universe
(less than 10125). How many possibilities than has a plot of 100m2
to be filled with 1000 alternative building materials? The designer travels
through that multiple universe, only able to name some of the particles (s)he
passes. After all, the number of words available in any language to cover this
multitude never exceeds 108. Only drawn icons as legend to a larger
drawing can approach it. How could we scientify the drawing and its legend, its
vocabulary? Here the concept of scale, limited by grain (smallest drawn particle) and frame of the drawing plays an important role.
Buildings
and urban designs have a long period of use and they are earthbound. So they
have to function in a changing context (perspective) that is unpredictable and
not influenced by the programming authority, designer or user. From the
viewpoint of their durability they should be able to accommodate varying
programmes and daily changing aims of their inhabitants and users. This quality
of building design is called ‘robustness’. ‘Flexibility’ is only part of it, multifunctionality another
part. So, from all artefacts, buildings have the most context sensitive
function for use, perception and market, not to be evaluated without that
context and therefore hardly comparable to each
other (sometimes even unique). In this field it is difficult to find
comparable examples for research to draw more general conclusions for design.
Even with a
comparable programme of demands, not only their own diversity of solutions, but also the diversity of their contexts or
perspectives to function in, is very large. Consequently, the diversity of
rational reasons (determined by context) to choose a final alternative is even
larger. So, building design research often has the character of an n=1 study
with limited general value to other designs. Design research, based on more examples
than one, is often ignored by designers, because on location many design
relevant circumstances appear different from what the examined examples had in
common. The descriptive interpretation of context by researchers differs from
the imaginative interpretation of designers stressing possibilities rather than
probabilities. Moreover, the principal often asks for a unique design,
‘exploiting’ rare qualities of context. So design decisions seldom can be
founded on examples univocally and professionally by the lack of material for
comparison.
Predicting (empirical) research produces probable futures by counting
chance from experience. Design produces possible futures, especially when they
are not yet probable, by drawing possible events. Experimental empirical
research can also produce unexpected possible futures, however only because it
presupposes the design of the experiment[a]
and its instruments[b].
This article firstly stresses this difference, alerting different
language games. Then it makes the concept of context and perspective
operational for research by scale articulation. It distinguishes four types
of design research and research by design on the basis of object and context
being determined or variable. At last it asks attention for an important condition
for these types of research: the retievability of the results of design on the
basis of specified context, perspective and readable impacts.
1.b
Possible,
probable and desirable futures
Possibility
as such, contains more than what is actually possible, it contains anything
that ever could be invented. However it contains less then what is imaginable,
for instance science fiction. The boundaries of the imaginable we cannot draw,
because the other side of the imaginable is principally not imaginable (Wittgenstein 1922). The boundary of the possible we can imagine,
though we do not know it. This oppresses in design research, biology,
ecology and management science. Kauffman (Kauffman
2000) states: ‘In statistical mechanics, with its famous
liter box of gas as an isolated thermodynamic system, we can prestate the
configuration space of all possible positions and momenta of the gas particles
in the box. … What if we cannot
prestate the configuration space of a biosphere …’. In that case Laplace
statistics is not a useful instrument. Probability partly contains logical
necessity and truth. Necessary or true is per definition probable, but probable
is not always necessary or true. However it can become true. The boundary of
probability is drawn by choice of the percentile, for instance the 99%
percentile. The not probable 1% looks small, but in the combinatoric explosion
of possibilities certainly the unexpected and ceteris non paribus, it is
very large. In design it is the object of attention pre-eminently. Otherwise
design would be prediction.
The
difference between research and design is the difference in modality between probable and possible. The set of probable and therefore
empirically researchable futures[c]
is part of a much larger set of possible futures (Figure 1). Probable futures
can be predicted because they are probable, but how do we explore the possibilities
to the extent that they are improbable?
These must be designed.
|
|
|
Figure 1 - Modalities, their corresponding
activities and basis of reasoning |
This
inclusive distinction also refers to a difference in language of causal and
conditional reasoning.
A cause is
only a cause under well-defined conditions. When a journal reports: ‘The
collision was caused by the inattention of one of the drivers’, a physicist
could state: ‘Nonsens! The collision was caused by two objects approaching
eachother with high speed’. If that is true, the journal is not right, because
when the two cars would not have approached eachother, the inattention would
not have been the cause of a collision. The approaching was a hidden condition
presupposed in the first explanation of the collision under these
circumstances. The inattention as a cause was the ‘last added condition’ the
collision to happen.
A visual
representation of architectural design says more that a thousand words, but
what kind of words are these? They sum
up conditions producing possibilities[d]
for future users. These users choose their own multidude of activities within
these conditions. For example a household is not caused by the
architectural design, so it is not predicable as long as you believe in its
freedom of choice. An architectural design only makes different households possible.
The desirable future, the set of desired events (such as for example summarised
on a specific level of scale in the party political programmes) overlaps both:
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|
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Figure 2 - Possible, probable and desirable
futures |
When
analysed, this domain of partly enclosing and overlapping types of future (on
an other level of abstraction ‘modes’) provides 5 exclusive categories (Figure
2):
1.
The
first category is composed by desired perspectives, but impossible according to
all technical insights (science fiction). They are irrelevant to scientific
research and technical study in object language. On an other level of
abstraction psychological research, for instance dream research, they could be
relevant.
2.
Futures
which we do want, and are probably fulfilled, are thus per definition also
possible. These futures do not demand our prime
interest. It is highly desirable that the sun will rise tomorrow, but
also so probable, that we do not have to call on the services of a firm of
consultants in order to ensure that the sun will actually rise tomorrow.
3.
For
the possible futures to the extent that they are not probable, but desirable
indeed we must undertake some action, this is the domain of our aims.
4.
The
probable and therefore also possible futures that we do not want are brought up
by problem-detecting research. They contain the domain of our problems.
5.
The
possible futures that are improbable and are (still) not desired by anyone
until exposed by the designer. The domain of desirable futures can easily
change by newly designed possibilities.
Empirical
research confines itself to the probable futures, the design also reaches out
to possible futures, most pure in as far as they are not probable. Of
course any design has lots of probable components on higher and lower levels of
scale, but its public appreciation does not only concern its predictability.
What probably will happen, will also happen without design. Prediction (for
example: ‘this spanning will hold’) is an essential, but a less characteristic
part of design.
1.c Different language games
Different
modal domains raise different language games (Wittgenstein
1953), characterised by different professional reductions
of reality (Table 1).
|
Language
games: |
being
able |
knowing |
wanting |
|
Modality: |
possible |
probable |
desirable |
|
Activities: |
design |
research |
policy |
|
Reductions
as to |
|
|
|
|
Character: |
legend |
variable |
agenda |
|
Space or
time: |
tolerance |
relations |
appointments |
|
Table 1 – language games and their
practice |
|||
In every
day language the games are preceded by auxiliary verbs like ‘can’, ‘is’ or
‘want to’. They warn us that the sentence to come should be interpretated in
the respective mode. Otherwise the listener could blame us as a liar when (s)he
interpretes our intention ‘This building can be built’ or ‘I want this building
to be built’ as ‘This building will be built’. The first sentences show a
possibility or desirability, the last a
probability. Any expression is an abstraction and a reduction of a presupposed
reality. Here, we distinguish reductions of character and space or time of the
nouns in the expression.
The primary
language of design to show possibilities, is that of a drawing. When the
designer records the key to symbols (legend) of his drawing, for instance red
for urban areas, yellow for agriculture, and blue for water, (s)he reduces the
variation within the urban area, agriculture and the water. If (s)he makes
his/her drawing with pre-supposed legend unities, (s)he first selects their site and form (state of dispersion) roughly and subsequently more precisely. So,
during the design process (s)he reduces the tolerances of the design for the benefit of its feasibility.
The researcher reduces reality in variables, but does not accept that a
variable may assume any arbitrary value. (S)he looks for relations between the variables in order to restrict them in their freedom
of movement in order to make more precise predictions.
The policy maker reduces the problems to a few items on the agenda and tries to reach consensus by arrangements and appointments. In practice an agenda is often confused with the legenda of the proposal.
1.d Context sensibility, a matter of scale
Architecture is more context sensible than for instance mechanical
engineering. That makes scientific generalization difficult (ceteris non
paribus). How could we make science aware of context?
Scientify context itself, starting with its orders of size.
An
important difference comparing architectural and urban design with other
technical design, comprises an extreme context sensibility and thus non-recurrence of architectural and urban development
design interventions. Context of architectural and urban objects comprises everything outside the frame of the object considered or to be designed, which could influence
it (such as the location form, the layout and function prior to the design and
the social desires, the programme of demands) or vice versa. The concept of
context is scale-dependent and subject to scale-paradoxes.
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Figure 3 - scale-paradox |
Figure 4 - naming orders of scale |
Figure 3
shows a spatial example of concept confusion, based upon a difference in the
scale of consideration (scale paradox). It is shown here that identical
spatial patterns allow different conclusions to be drawn when elements are
involved in the consideration using a differing scope (scale level, largest frame, smallest texture grain).
For example
if in the figure above one takes one circle each time and the surroundings into
consideration then one must ascertain a ‘difference’, although ‘equality’
should be ascertained when one repeatedly compares groups of seven with their
surroundings. Something similar applies to the consideration from inside to
outside and from outside to inside. The paradoxical concept ‘homogenous
mixture’ indicates precisely which dilemma this entails: it is homogenous at a
specific scale level, at a lower abstraction level it is heterogeneous.
The concept ‘clustered dispersion’, well known in Dutch urban planning, is
another example. For concepts like this the question must be asked immediately:
‘which scale for clustering, and which for dispersion?’. Moreover this figure
shows that such confusion of tongues is possible using a factor 3 linear scale
difference. Between the grains of sand and the earth lie 7 decimals; therefore
in this range there are more than 14 concept confusions lurking. So, to avoid
concept confusion, premises and conclusions in an argument should concern the
same scale. Therefore scales here are named with nominal values with a range.
|
FRAME |
NOMINAL
RADIUS |
|
|
Global................................................................................................................................. ............................................................................................................................................ .......................................................................................................................................... |
10000 |
|
|
Continental......................................................................................................................... .......................................................................................................................................... |
3000 |
|
|
Sub-continental................................................................................................................. |
1000 |
|
|
National.............................................................................................................................. .......................................................................................................................................... |
300 |
|
|
Sub-national....................................................................................................................... .......................................................................................................................................... |
100 |
|
|
Regional............................................................................................................................. .......................................................................................................................................... |
30 |
|
|
Sub-regional....................................................................................................................... .......................................................................................................................................... |
10 |
|
|
Local | District | Borough |
3 |
|
|
Area | Village...................................................................................................................... .......................................................................................................................................... |
1 |
km |
|
Neighbourhood | Hamlet |
300 |
|
|
Ensemble |.......................................................................................................................... .......................................................................................................................................... |
100 |
|
|
Building complex |
30 |
|
|
Building.............................................................................................................................. .......................................................................................................................................... |
10 |
|
|
Building_segment.............................................................................................................. |
3 |
|
|
Building_part...................................................................................................................... .......................................................................................................................................... |
1 |
m |
|
Building_component......................................................................................................... |
300 |
|
|
Superelement..................................................................................................................... .......................................................................................................................................... |
100 |
|
|
Element............................................................................................................................... .......................................................................................................................................... |
30 |
|
|
Subelement........................................................................................................................ .......................................................................................................................................... |
10 |
|
|
Trade_materials................................................................................................................ |
3 |
|
|
Composition_materials |
1 |
|
|
Material............................................................................................................................... .......................................................................................................................................... |
<1 |
mm |
|
Table 2 – scale articulation |
||
This gave
rise to allocation of frame and grain in an
array (Table 2). They differ systematically to other scale levels by a linear
factor of around 3 (Figure 4) or around 10 by surface for architectural
categories, (discourses, drawings, legends, concepts and objects) in the urban
development (Jong and Paasman 1998) and the technology of building (Eekhout 1998). They enable the context of the category in question to be defined outside the
neighbour values.
In a first
draft the grain is 10% of the frame, in a plan with specifications made to
scale the grain is 0.1%.
In this
array we can locate the architectural, urban or technical object accordingly
its largest (frame) and smallest (grain) measure concerned. The rest is
'context'. There are external
contexts outside the frameand internal
within the grain.
Management,
culture, economy. technique, ecology and the design-area of space, time and
mass, are scale-dependent as well (Figure 5). In all these areas aimed
(intentions) and other (unintended) impacts could be sorted by order of scale.
Impacts
suppose a perspective. Administration can change between initiative and mere
control, culture between experimental and traditional and so on. These changes
could have a different periodicity. All of them influence the way we estimate
impacts of a plan.
|
|
|
|
CONTEXT PERSPECTIVE |
|
|
Variable per level of scale and period of change. For example: tentative nationally: managerial/political: initiative < > laissez-faire 7 years cultural: traditional
< > experimental 15 years economics: growth < > shrinkage 30 years technical: combination
< > specialization 60
years ecological: heterogeneous
< > homogeneous 120 years mass-space-time: concentration
< > deconcentration 240 years |
|
|
Figure 5 - Context and its change (perspective) |
|
|
|
|
Figure 6 – a
tentative example of a national perspective |
The concept
of ‘perspective’ in time (Figure 6) here exists as
change of ‘context’ in space, which becomes significant when the intended and
unintended impacts of a design are to be interpreted, named and estimated. In which
perspective does this happen, with which plan horizon and under which assumptions with regards to external developments
(an initiating or controlling government, a opportunity- or tradition directed
culture, a growing or stagnating economy, a technology which is successful
using function combinations or on the contrary separating functions, an increasing
or decreasing ecological or mass/space/time pressure).
1.e
Types
of design research and research by design
Design research (Table
3) concerns determined objects within determined contexts. Research by design (grey in Table 3) varies
either the object (identifying design) or the context (typology) or even both (designing study):
|
|
OBJECT |
|
|
|
determined |
variable |
|
CONTEXT determined |
Design
Research |
Identifying Design |
|
variable |
Typology |
Designing Study |
|
Table 3 – four types of design related research |
||
Identifying design (right
above in Table 3) is a daily practice in each and every civil engineering
office that does not work in an intuitively untraceable manner. An object must
be designed for a specific context (spatial, ecological, technical, economic,
cultural, and administrative). New possibilities are sought for this determined
context usually summarized in a programme of demands (brief, part of the context). As soon as the design is ready, thus also
the object is determined, it can be researched empirically regarding its
external (contextual) impacts, but also regarding the design means applied in
the design. This is in many respects empirical design research.
After a
number of design researches in varying contexts have been carried out, the same
context-independent types are found. A type is not yet a model (Quincy 1788-1825), (Argan
1965): one can make many models of one type. The type is
context independent. This does not mean that the context is of no importance for typology. The context
is variable, and this variability
therefore is also object of typological research.
For each (relative) context independent type, variants or models of which the appearance may be context dependent are
subsequently described.
Context
also has form, different on each level of scale.Therefore context itself can
become a design object on a higher level of scale. If the object and the
context are alternating subject of design we call it designing study.
These
differences have a radical impact on the research method and the manner by
which the research proposals and the executed studies are assessed. In this way
the theory of probabilities of concepts, such as chance and average, play a
smaller role than in the empirical study of the probable. The focus transfers
the boundary of a 99 percentile probability scope. High context sensibility
allows less generalisation and induces differential thinking.
There are
of course also similarities which make possible to determine whether a product
can be considered as scientific or not. The most important is the result’s
ability to be criticised.
1.f
Making
a drawing a scientific document
A special problem in design related study and research is the language
of the drawing and subsequently their retrievability.
For building design research
with more general design relevant (context sensitive) conclusions, we need a database with a
large number of designs and composing images to find different examples in
comparable contexts. This places great demands on the possibilities of verbal
and non verbal selection within
such a database[e]. It has
consequences on the effort of documentation per
image. It has methodological implications in naming
and defining countless
possible architectural interventions and their effects in different contexts.
For this purpose the Faculty of Architecture of the Delft Technical University
(DUT) spend several years in developing an Image Archive of Architectural
Interventions (IAAI), able to store thousands of images made per year in that
faculty, retrievable amongst others by location, context, perspective and
supposed effect within that context. Its prototype functioning on the internet
now contains approximately 1500 documented images from 500 recent graduate
projects equiped with logical sentence
functions[f] as syntactically composed keywords. They are retrievable by alternate
choice of images and keywords. The database is prepared in the future to mount
3D designs in a 3D map of the Netherlands allowing fly-through in a scenario
chosen in advance, to see them at first glance in their supposed
mass-space-time context. Historical
images then can
be recorded in their own former context and perspective.
Recording
urban designs on a national, regional, local and technical level of scale in
this archive makes these designs accessible for planning research on other
universities and decision making institutions. Recording technical details of
buildings makes them accessible to other technical faculties like Civil
Engineering and Industrial Design in DUT, Architecture in TUE and various
faculties abroad. As soon as these faculties would like to give more attention
to the context-sensibility of their own design examples, other than building
designs, easily can be recorded according to their level of scale. It will give
the database a more general design orientation, stimulating cooperation in
research between the technical faculties and decision making institutions.
Some suggestions to make a drawing a scientifically retrievable
document are:
·
make the drawing comparable by scale (frame,
grain) and legend
·
name context and perspective
·
to reduce naming, name families of design by
naming operations O and their impact (Figure 6)
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·
make the drawing retrievable for critical
review and further research
The Image Archive of Architectural Interventions IAAI[g], based on these principles is in development. The website refreshes itself controlling
its links every night. A top 10 from the best documented 100 images will be
selected as home page every month. The input by students is still a bottleneck.
The application is temporarily restricted to the Faculty. A further development
of IAAI comprises:
·
a
development from mere registration
to a flight simulator with different sceneries in different futures, designed
by the students that will be the designers of these futures;
·
differently
categorizing inputs by turning
the database linguistic;
·
intelligently
connecting the inputs (systematizing);
·
connecting
different external expert systems for decision and design support (DS).
1.g
Conclusion
Modality
distinguishes design from empirical research. Orientation on possible, probable
and desirable futures induce different language games in the practice of design. Context sensibility
of the object of design raises
methodological problems of generalization. They could be overcome by context or
scale-articulation and distinguishing different methods for design research, studying design, typological
research and designing study.
Ways to
study design require:
·
making
the drawing retrievable as a scientific document
·
by
making its frame, grain, context, perspective and readable impacts explicit;
·
stimulating
creativity by viewing possibilities rather then probable or desirable futures;
·
developing
the desire and ability to be criticized.
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Key words