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Abstract
We all retain memories of places. They identify who we are as individuals. At the same time, they tie us to networks of people, culture and society. Even through time they reach into the past to people whose lives and experiences were as real as ours, and into the future to those whose lives we can only imagine. Our ability to transcend our own experiences, by using them to imagine other people and places, discover something new and surprising, and deepen a thought demonstrates the power and potential that remembrance holds for us as we create future places. If we are to design, and teach others to design, places that are memorable and support a meaningful existence, we must first understand the essence and content that makes a place memorable and how to transfer this content as we design. When we, as architectural designers, understand how memorable experiences translate into meaningful inquiry and design strategies, it points us toward fruitful conjectures and comparisons and helps us develop a broad range of conceivable avenues to pursue and evaluate. We complete a meaningful design cycle by not only prying our remembered past loose from its content, but also by imagining the future through referring to that past.
... According to Downing (2003) one of the primary biological needs in humans is expressing their selves such as desires, values, and enthusiasm, and their cultures such as language, physical features, and consciousness of common identity. People have individual memories of places, others, experiences and events, which with each act of remembrance they are faced with their individuality and connectedness. ...
... 'Although each individual image of place is unique, patterns of recurring domains emerged from this process; the secret place, the Arcadian place, the ancestral place, the shared place, the alone place, the intimate place, the gregarious place, places that stretch to meet the horizon line, and places that enclose and protect. Domains are symbolic of a quality of life; contact, retreat, participation, identity, love, grace, sensuousness, intelligence, fear, intimacy, growth, expansiveness, reflection, communing, and loss.' (Downing, 2003). ...
Rapid population influx due to migration in Australia has produced diverse cultural landscapes, which become visible in cities as physical forms, settings and symbols produced by different ethnic communities. Scholars have argued that people moving away from the country of their birth, whether this be a necessary migration, labour mobility or voluntary migration, results in a difficult process of resettlement for families and individuals. To provide a cohesive multicultural society for all citizens, it is essential to understand how immigrants perceive their new environments and how they make connections in a new land in the process of cultural renewal. While the policy of ‘multiculturalism’ has had a rocky road since the optimistic 1970s, a drive through many suburbs in Australian cities shows buildings, festivals and communal gatherings of people that express and refer to diverse cultural backgrounds.
Urban green spaces, ranging from private home gardens to public parks and botanical gardens, play an important role in the life of immigrants. Besides psychological and the restorative effects of urban green spaces, these spaces are public places that provide opportunities for recreation, social gatherings, and the celebration of collective cultural values and events such as festivals for many communities. This study aims to raise awareness of ethnicity as an important issue in park settings and spaces. It investigates the interrelationship between these cultural practices in the urban park environment, in relation to ethnic and cultural identity and physical settings. The concept of transculturalism – reinventing a new common culture as a result of migration to a new place – can help the analysis of the affects and the perception of urban green spaces. The paper will review different experiences of immigrants in relation to the use and perception of urban green spaces, developing alternative perspectives about the Australian landscapes.
... In her study of how memorable experiences of place translate into the meaningful inquiry and design strategies, Downing (2003) points out the essence of living is undoubtedly social construction, and that is because human identities are biologically driven by memory and imagination. It is argued that one of the primary biological needs of humans is expressing their selves through desires, values, and enthusiasm, and their cultures through language, physical features, and consciousness of common identity. ...
... It is argued that one of the primary biological needs of humans is expressing their selves through desires, values, and enthusiasm, and their cultures through language, physical features, and consciousness of common identity. People have individual memories of places, others, experiences, and events, which with each act of remembrance they are faced with their individuality and connectedness, each person shares the specific constructs of the world with other humans as well (Downing 2003). ...
The thesis reviews different uses and appreciation of urban park landscapes by non-English-speaking immigrants, and develops an alternative predominant perspective of the Australian park landscape. It builds on theories of place, habitus, and landscape as cultural phenomena, and investigates new uses of park spaces by recent generations of immigrants to Australia. It questions the extent to which Australian public parks contribute to the sense of inclusivity, or alienation, experienced by non-English-speaking immigrant users of these spaces. The main focus is on the Iranian community of Melbourne, Australia, and their engagements with urban park spaces before and after migration in two different landscape contexts: Iran and Australia. The research explores the Iranian-Australians understanding of urban parks and their natural and cultural landscapes and includes a range of experiences of these environments in Iran and Australia (Melbourne). The approach acknowledges past studies and explores Iranian views of the interrelationship between people and the physical environment and how these contrast with Australian attitudes.<br /
... At the deep context level reside innate characteristics, genetically derived, and reflectig developed aspects from childhood and adolescence [Adams and Marshall 1996]. In a professional context, questions related to the professional class identification, especially for designers, generate problems of self-understanding as professionals; since they affect the personality development with respect to the personality traits and the behaviors they promote [Baumeister and Muraven 1996], [Downing 2003]. At the immediate context level work environment, stress situation, and self-confidence are some of the aspects related to identity formation; and the combination of built personality, expertise and project pressure situations shape the behavior in each situation [Barrick and Mount 1991]. ...
... The three different levels of context that can influence skills were identified as: Deep context, that represent the past scholar context and developed knowledge, and the innate capacities/talents identified from childhood and adolescence [Downing 2003], [Dong 2010]; Educational context, that brings up the knowledge absorbed and trained during graduation and professional experiences [Cross 1982], [Etela 2000]; and Immediate context, that relates the expertise level, work resources, and actual project requirements [Cross 2004], [Christensen 2006]. In this sense, we assume that varying from each individual some of the competencies discussed on Table 3 may be developed since the early years in a deep context. ...
A designer’s professional identity (DPI) develops through both education and professional experience, building on core personality traits and innate skills. In this paper a systematic literature review and a secondary narrative review were developed in order to map personal attributes and design skills that comprise the DPI. Just a few works in literature dealt with these two elements holistically. Thus, in order to address this gap a holistic understanding of these elements, in context, is proposed as a cohesive framework where a DPI can be described as it evolves over time.
... Hellström and Hellström (2003) create an interesting discussion about the relationship of past, present and future experiences in the design process. Downing (2003) explores the notion of the designers experience through the use of memories. She states that designers " re-create from memorable experiences " (ibid 230) and that memory " consciously or unconsciously surrounds the [design] task " . ...
... Hellström and Hellström (2003) create an interesting discussion about the relationship of past, present and future experiences in the design process. Downing (2003) explores the notion of the designers experience through the use of memories. She states that designers "re-create from memorable experiences" (ibid 230) and that memory "consciously or unconsciously surrounds the [design] task". ...
... At the same time, they tie us to networks of people, culture and society. Even through time they reach into the past to people whose lives and experiences were as real as ours, and into the future to those whose lives we can only imagine (Downing, 2003). ...
A space is perceived by experiences and usage. The purpose of the study is conveying the memory effects in an adaptive reuse building in order to discuss interior space and memory. Protecting the essence of the used materials or structural features and being respectful to the past experiences in the place will increase emotional experiences of the user and will preserve the building in the matter of significance. In order to explain this approach with a case Cengel Han is studied with both individual and regional effects of the building in the memory were interpreted.Keywords: Memory of spaces, sense of place, essence of the space, memory space relation.
... explored prior solutions of the target technical system.Linsey et al. (2010) studied the effect of a collection of examples of other technical systems, distinguishing close or far domains with reference to the target technical system. Others focused on hints for considering requirements(Downing 2003), templates describing an entire class of solutions(Senbel et al. 2013) or hints about specific characteristics of prior solutions or other examples such as function and behaviour(Doboli and Umbarkar 2014). Such kind of studies usually measures the effects of stimulation directly on design proposals, e.g. the outcomes of the design session or process.Precedents are provided into two main forms to designers during design sessions. ...
This paper presents the outcomes of an exploratory research to clarify the performance of R&D designers when involved in design task for the ideation of the next generation of a technical system. The research aims also at clarifying if creative stimuli play a role in supporting ideation after idea generativity decreases because of natural exhaustion or the emergence of fixation. The effect of precedents (singular as patents, and structural as technology evolution trends), as well as design strategies (in the form of a design procedure for inventive problem solving) on idea generation, is compared by means of an experiment involving 24 R&D Iranian engineers. Precedents demonstrated to be more effective than design strategies in supporting productivity in idea generation, while generally they are not effective enough to support the generation of candidate ideas for the next generation of a technical system with a robust repeatability. The main recorded lacks depend on the capabilities of creative stimuli to support the generation of novel ideas, as they are generally effective in providing good results with reference to technical plausibility and relevance for a target audience. The results of the experiment are also discussed with reference to the efficiency of the design process (number of generated ideas per time unit). The outcomes of such studies, as part of a broader research objective, serve as input to support the development of a serious game to support R&D engineers to face design tasks for the next generation of technical systems with higher motivation and engagement, providing them with an improved design experience.
... Designers draw on their personal experiences of space for action, places and social interactions to imagine the reactions of other people (Downing, 2003). They may also expand their own sense of self by drawing on personal experiences of different identity roles and perceptions of place throughout the process of designing a new business. ...
The present study offers new input to the discussion of how entrepreneurship education and training programmes can be tailored to suit design professionals. To a large extent, existing entrepreneurship teaching for creative people is based on a traditional administrative management logic that often results in a clash between entrepreneurial demands and creative identities. The paper is based on the following rationale: the better we understand designers' reasoning and their struggles concerning becoming entrepreneurs, the better we are able to design entrepreneurship learning experiences that meet their needs. Since designers' career‐making tends to be highly driven by their strong sense of identity, the paper takes an identity perspective. The empirical foundation of the research is based on observation studies and phenomenological interviews conducted during an eight‐week entrepreneurship training program. Twenty‐five nascent design entrepreneurs with a professional background as designers participated in the voluntary programme. The paper offers novel and critical insights into designers' experiences of the entrepreneurial identity and reasoning as they participate in entrepreneurship training.
... At the same time, they tie us to networks of people, culture and society. Even through time they reach into the past to people whose lives and experiences were as real as ours, and into the future to those whose lives we can only imagine (Downing, 2003). ...
A space is perceived by experiences and usage. The purpose of the study is conveying the memory effects in an adaptive reuse building in order to discuss interior space and memory. Protecting the essence of the used materials or structural features and being respectful to the past experiences in the place will increase emotional experiences of the user and will preserve the building in the matter of significance. In order to explain this approach with a case Cengel Han is studied with both individual and regional effects of the building in the memory were interpreted.Keywords: Memory of spaces, sense of place, essence of the space, memory space relation.
... That is, design solutions do not occur in a vacuum or pop out of thin air. Architects, for instance, frequently refer to places they know (Downing 2003) or make analogies with previous projects in the act of designing (Heylighen and Neuckermans 2002). Especially during the early, conceptual stage of the design process, previous designs are said to provide grist for a number of decisions to be made (Domeshek and Kolodner 1992). ...
... Pelos mais diversos motivos, esses usuários estavam diante de uma nova informação, seja o desejo de utilizar de outra forma um objeto que não espreme as frutas de modo eficaz ou a necessidade de transpor substâncias entre recipientes. Ao confrontar-se com algo que não se encaixa nos padrões de reconhecimento e categorização, o usuário inicia então um busca de "referências" (precedentes) ao momento que está vivenciando (DOWNING, 2003). ...
Os domínios do projeto de design vêm sendo ampliados nos últimos anos e suas fronteiras
parecem não ser mais tão definidas. Esse artigo busca explorar esses limites a partir da
observação das relações incomuns entre pessoas e objetos. O deslocamento semântico entre as
intenções dos designers e as interpretações dos usuários pode ser uma fonte de pesquisa para
os designers através da construção de metáforas sob um modo de pensar não-linear (lateral).
Dessa forma, o objetivo do projeto se amplia ao investigar novas questões entre design e uso.
Palavras-Chave: design; uso impróprio; metáforas.
... Em relação aos processos projetuais, Casakin (2007) indica que a construção de metáforas pode atuar como um mecanismo de direcionamento do raciocínio transferindo expressões emotivas a um discurso através da representação de ideias e conceitos análogos ao projeto. Ao confrontar-se com algo que não se encaixa nos padrões de reconhecimento e categorização, o usuário inicia então um busca de referências (precedentes) ao momento que está vivenciando (DOWNING, 2003). Esse processo começa com o agrupamento dos conceitos em padrões já convencionados e passa pela comparação desses conceitos (uns relativos aos outros) de modo a permitir a descrição de relações e o estabelecimento de uma base para a verificação de consistências internas (BECCARI, SMYTHE, 2010). ...
A elaboração de metáforas e outras figuras de linguagem é freqüente ao longo do processo de design. Os designers as usam para facilitar o próprio raciocínio e a sua comunicação. Neste artigo desenvolve-se uma reflexão sobre este fenômeno usando os resultados de uma experiência de metaprojeto realizada para uma empresa produtora de semi-elaborados plásticos. Constatou-se que a construção de cenários é um dos momentos que pode ser associado à construção de metáforas. Palavras Chave: design; metaprojeto, cenários; metáforas. Abstract The metaphors' development and other language's figures are common throughout the design process. The designers use them to facilitate their own thinking and communication. We have evaluated this phenomenon by using the results from an experience of metadesign for a company that produces semi-finished plastics. Then, we have found that the scenarios' construction is one of the more prolific moments in the metaphors' development.
... At the same time, they tie us to networks of people, culture and society. Even through time they reach into the past to people whose lives and experiences were as real as ours, and into the future to those whose lives we can only imagine (Downing, 2003). ...
A space is perceived by experiences and usage. The purpose of the study is conveying the memory effects in an adaptive reuse building in order to discuss interior space and memory. Protecting the essence of the used materials or structural features and being respectful to the past experiences in the place will increase emotional experiences of the user and will preserve the building in the matter of significance. In order to explain this approach with a case Cengel Han is studied with both individual and regional effects of the building in the memory were interpreted.Keywords: Memory of spaces, sense of place, essence of the space, memory space relation.
... This way of creation and use of surfaces showed how design students wanted to influence and learn from each other. As Downing [55] suggested, humans learn to value certain things from their communal networks. His notion of transcending memory becomes very relevant and important here. ...
... This was an example of a creative use of surfaces and it showed how design students wanted to influence and learn from each other's design knowledge. As Downing (2003) suggested, humans learn to value certain things from their communal networks. His notion of transcending memory becomes very relevant and important here. ...
A largely overlooked aspect of creative design practices is how physical space in design studios plays a role in supporting designers' everyday work. In particular, studio surfaces such as designers' desks, office walls, notice boards, clipboards and drawing boards are full of informative, inspirational and creative artefacts such as, sketches, drawings, posters, story-boards and Post-it notes. Studio surfaces are not just the carriers of information but importantly they are sites of methodic design practices, i.e. they indicate, to an extent, how design is being carried out. This article describes the results of an ethnographic study on the use of workplace surfaces in design studios, from two academic design departments. Using the field study results, the article introduces an idea of ‘artful surfaces’. Artful surfaces emphasise how artfully designers integrate these surfaces into their everyday work and how the organisation of these surfaces comes about helping designers in accomplishing their creative and innovative design practices. Using examples from the field study, the article shows that artful surfaces have both functional and inspirational characteristics. From the field study, three types of artful surfaces are identified: personal; shared; and project-specific. The article suggests that a greater insight into how these artful surfaces are created and used could lead to better design of novel display technologies to support designers' everyday work.
... At the same time they tie us into networks of people, culture and society. When we seek to create future spaces we can use the power and potential of remembrance to, as Downing [4] suggests, transcend our own experiences by using our memories to deepen our thoughts, to imagine other people and places, and to discover things which are new and surprising. ...
Where to dwell has been a question since the beginning of human existence. In this paper we return to this everlasting issue because rapid advances in information technology have created bright new avenues for spatial design. Technology can be the means to create new dwelling spaces. The question is how new technology can lead us to better lives. We propose a spatial hyperlink which integrates information technology with spatial design to create a virtual connection between spaces. The objective is to create a sense of connection for people who live separately, to make it possible for people who live in enclosed spaces to connect with nature, and to connect people's past, present and future territorial identities. Two design cases are presented to demonstrate how spatial hyperlink works. The first case creates a place that connects people who use it at different times. The second case creates a place that connects people to nature.
... Connections between memory and architecture are important because it is through memory that subjects negotiate across 'specific spatiotemporal frameworks' (Sargin 2004: 660) and mediate spatial transformations (DeCerteau 1984). Personal and collective memories of inhabiting places thus construct sites of significance (Blunt 2003; Fenster 2004), which are recalled at the moment of loss 3 (Downing 2003), and hence correspond to particular spatio-temporal meanings inscribed on its architecture (Bastéa 2004). Lefebvre (1991) suggests that the trialectics of perceived, conceived, and lived spaces are fundamental to the production and consumption of space. ...
This paper examines the relationship between domestic architecture, spatial memory and the construction of subjectivities through an in-depth study of the modernization of Bethnal Green Estate. It illustrates how the architecture of Bethnal Green Estate was the site of powerful discourses of gender, family and community, which shaped the nature of participants' relationship with its architecture. Situating architecture within the material culture that we produce, consume and interact with, this study indicates how the participants constructed the nature of difference between the architecture of kitchens, front rooms and communal areas in the Estate as illustrative of gender, ethnic and generational difference. The 'spatial loss' of memories of tenement living experienced by elderly participants also implied a dichotomous relationship between a 'nostalgic' past and a 'modernized' present. In designing certain spaces within the estate, some participants formed an ambiguous relationship with its architecture, perceiving this relationship to be negative or positive at different times and in different contexts. This paper concludes that in critiquing and reshaping the modernized architecture, the tenants did not just challenge the 'conceived' spaces of the architects but also the 'lived' spaces of their own making.
... That is, design solutions do not occur in a vacuum or pop out of thin air. Architects, for instance, frequently refer to places they know (Downing 2003) or make analogies with previous projects in the act of designing (Heylighen and Neuckermans 2002). Especially during the early, conceptual stage of the design process, previous designs are said to provide grist for a number of decisions to be made (Domeshek and Kolodner 1992). ...
Designs do not occur in a vacuum. They are nourished by a breeding ground composed of various substances, phenomena and traces, which function as raw material for concept generation and ultimately for design. This paper examines the composition and function of this ‘culture medium’ in the context of design education through reporting two content-wise connected studies: a series of in-depth interviews with experienced design tutors, and an ethnographically oriented study with design students. Combining and comparing information gathered in both studies reveals some interesting insights about what ‘culture media’ are valued by tutors and students.
... Domains are symbolic of a quality of life; contact, retreat, participation, identity, love, grace, sensuousness, intelligence, fear, intimacy, growth, expansiveness, reflection, communing, and loss. " Downing, 2003:216 The opening clause of this extract emphasizes another key element of the experience of place: its essentially personal nature. Most authors stress that while some generalizations are possible, sense of place remains an emergent property of interaction between an individual and the environment, and while there are some shared elements, the experience of place is fundamentally unique to each of us. ...
Re-creating real places - as distinct from virtual spaces or environments - using virtual reality technology raises a series of significant challenges. Fortunately there is a large body of existing research into the experience of place which might reasonably contribute to our understanding of the task. This paper reviews key aspects of the 'place' literature, relates them to the concept of presence, and then illustrates their application in the context of virtual reality. We conclude that some modification of existing theories of sense of place is necessary for this context and outline proposals for further work.
... This way of creation and use of surfaces showed how design students wanted to influence and learn from each other. As Downing [55] suggested, humans learn to value certain things from their communal networks. His notion of transcending memory becomes very relevant and important here. ...
Within Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) research, the notion of technologically-mediated awareness is often used for allowing relevant people to maintain a mental model of activities, behaviors and status information about each other so that they can organize and coordinate work or other joint activities. The initial conceptions of awareness focused largely on improving productivity and efficiency within work environments. With new social, cultural and commercial needs and the emergence of novel computing technologies, the focus of technologically-mediated awareness has extended from work environments to people’s everyday interactions. Hence, the scope of awareness has extended from conveying work related activities to people’s emotions, love, social status and other broad range of aspects. This trend of conceptualizing HCI design is termed as experience-focused HCI. In my PhD dissertation, designing for awareness, I have reported on how we, as HCI researchers, can design awareness systems from experience-focused HCI perspective that follow the trend of conveying awareness beyond the task-based, instrumental and productive needs. Within the overall aim to design for awareness, my research advocates ethnomethodologically-informed approaches for conceptualizing and designing for awareness. In this sense, awareness is not a predefined phenomenon but something that is situated and particular to a given environment. I have used this approach in two design cases of developing interactive systems that support awareness beyond task-based aspects in work environments. In both the cases, I have followed a complete design cycle: collecting an in-situ understanding of an environment, developing implications for a new technology, implementing a prototype technology to studying the use of the technology in its natural settings. The first design case focused on mediating awareness in a work environment with a purpose of supporting social and informal interactions and community building. Using ethnomethodologically-informed ethnography, I studied an academic department over the period of six months and developed a prototype of an awareness system called Panorama that playfully mediated social awareness in a medium-sized work organization. Panorama is a large-screen display that supports mixed-initiative interaction. It allows co-workers to send their personalized objects such as holiday pictures, postcards and textual messages to be shown on the large screen in a dynamic way. At the same time, the system fetches abstract cues from the environment and represents these on the large screen. The purpose here is not to improve the work efficiencies but to create an environment that makes the co-workers socially aware of each other’s activities in a playful manner. I deployed the Panorama prototype in a staffroom of an academic department for two weeks and studied how it affected co-worker’s interactions and awareness about each other. The second design case was a part of a larger EU project called AMIDA (Augmented Multiparty Interaction with Distance Access). My goal was to design an interactive system to mediate awareness within a creative design studio environment. Using ethnomethodologically-informed ethnography, I studied 2 academic and a few professional design studios over eight months and developed a mobile phone bases prototype system called CAM (Cooperative Artefact Memory). CAM allows designers to collaboratively store relevant information onto their physical design artefacts, such as sketches, collages, story-boards, and physical mock-ups in the form of messages, annotations and external web links. After the implementation, I studied the use of CAM in a product design studio over three weeks to understand how CAM supported awareness during creative design sessions. Overall, my PhD dissertation shows how ethnographically informed understanding of a work environment can help in designing systems. My ethnomethodologically-informed approach helps in both conceptualizing and designing for awareness in interactive systems. The work done in the two design cases provides important insights into designing awareness systems using experience-focused HCI perspective.
The aesthetics of digital product is what attracts us to it. Aesthetics, it has been observed, may work like affordances as we respond to their invitations.
We report new data from a survey of loneliness in Australia during the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020–21, in order to identify those age groups most at risk of increased loneliness. Counter-intuitively, proportionately fewer elderly Australians experienced increased loneliness as a result of lockdowns, as compared with 44% of those aged 19–29 and 31% of those aged 40–49. To explain this pattern, we investigated how lockdowns disturbed the complex connections between types of place affordance and the age-specific cultural scripts that normally give rise to a sense of belonging. For younger age groups, such scripts demand their identification with future orientations and a sense of belonging tied to the more distant and wide-ranging places of career advance, meeting, play, and pleasure that lockdown inhibited. By contrast, older retired cohorts were more inclined to frame their sense of belonging in the past through the maintenance of community connections and closer place-bonds of their locality, cultural places of memory and return that they were more happily confined to during lockdowns.
This paper examines affective relationships between people and artefacts, and focuses on items found in domestic environments. Employing ethnographic resources, German descendants living in Brazil were interviewed. The study suggests that memory is the main component of affective bonds between people and their artefacts. Beyond the possibility of providing quality relationships among people and their artefacts, affective memory inscriptions upon artefacts make strong bonds possible in improving individual and social group memory extension, as well as extending product lifetimes. Studies of memory and affective bonds are relevant to Design given that memorable experiences may be translated through research and strategies towards products' design. Further research is necessary to benefit the inscription of affective memories on the design process.
Recent years have witnessed a number of initiatives to develop technology ("memory prosthetics") to enhance and extend human memory. Typical of these is "Memories for Life," which is one of the Grand Challenges in Computing identified by the British Computer Society in 2004. So far, the emphasis has been on the development of psychologically informed technology. This chapter, in contrast, proposes a conceptual framework based on the Heideggerian concepts of being-with and being-in for the development of such technology.
This book takes a fresh look at leadership through the paradigm of community. Community as Leadership develops leadership thought through important aspects of understanding community, such as individualism, sense of belonging, friendship, social networks, symbolism, liminality, language and ethics. The book also explores more critical and postmodern perspectives of leadership and community and examines themes for future research, as well as suggesting ideas and implications for leadership learning.
This paper presents a study on the role of precedents in illuminating creative ideas during iterative design for solving open-ended problems in electronic embedded systems. Through an experimental study grounded in cognitive psychology, this work examined the influence of precedents on the novelty, variety, quality, and utility of design solutions devised through an iterative design process involving groups of participants. Another tested hypothesis was whether incremental changes of requirements improve novelty. Results show that precedents did not increase solution novelty and quality, but improved utility. Precedents reduced design feature variety as solutions converged toward a few dominant designs. Incremental modification of requirements did not increase novelty.
One of the central interests of sociology is the relationship between self and society, and in particular how social change affects individuality, constraining or liberating the selves that we can be. This article proposes that because a sense of belonging plays a central role in connecting the person to the social, it can act as a window into studying the relationship between social change and the self. Furthermore, belonging offers a complex person-centred and dynamic approach that avoids reifying social structures, but rather depicts them as actively lived. A focus on belonging thus allows a dynamic examination of the mutual influence between self and society, and of how everyday practices are both regulated and creative, and hence generative of social change.
This paper focuses on the differences between interior design students' design processes as derived from an analysis of their sketching and design behavior. By implementing qualitative methodologies in the analysis of the sketches produced in the conceptual phase of the design process, the experiment allows identifying sketching characteristics and profiles. The motivation is to show that sketches can serve as a tool to differentiate between designers and recognize their personal approach and design strategies. The results point to three distinct sketching profiles that characterize designers' use of sketches as a tool for thinking and communicating ideas during their solution generation process. Awareness to differences between students' sketches and design behavior may support the development of pedagogical concepts, strategies and tools.
The erasure from the collective memory of the image, presence and vitality of an urban space is a painful act. Reasons for such dissolutions are multiple: ideology, alteration, progress and, in general, change. Architects and designers have the mission to properly question this erasure. They can develop the capacity to turn this erasure into a powerful source of creativity. The paper approaches the forgotten urban spaces (mainly the temporary dismissed) through identification, analysis and architectural temporary recovery. These urban spaces may be of the most different kinds: squares, streets, dismissed buildings and/or abandoned plots, small and large sites or industrial compounds and so on. Observation, analyses and proposals for recovery methods address the inventory of problems as well as possible attitudes of intervention. Consequently, this theme might reveal a diversity of cases and approaches that bear witness of the cultural richness embedded in the hidden realms of collective memory. In a 21st century that is overwhelmed by image, information and dynamism, it is particularly important for architects and designers to assume the special role of the creative recovery of forgotten spaces.
For the purpose of developing collaborative support in design studio environments, we have carried out ethnographic fieldwork in professional and academic product design studios. Our intention was to understand design practices beyond the productivity point of view and take into account the experiential, inspirational and aesthetical aspects of design practices. Using examples from our fieldwork, we develop our results around three broad themes by which design professionals support communication and collaboration: 1) use of artefacts, 2) use of space, and 3) designerly practices. We use the results of our fieldwork for drawing implications for designing technologies for the design studio culture.
Ecological design can be defined as any form of design that minimizes the environmentally destructive impacts by integrating
itself with living processes, nature’s own flows, cycles, and patterns. Ecological wisdom or patterns of awareness pertaining
to nature is inherent in the traditional settlement forms, which are the practices of traditional cultures and indigenous
knowledge systems. In contemporary setting, engineering, architecture, and other design disciplines are split from the local
knowledge systems. As knowledge of place or local knowledge is the starting point for ecological design, it requires an activity
of searching for patterns of awareness and retrieving the meaning of traditional settlement forms.
Flourishing interest in place as a critical mediator of human well-being has brought with it calls for researchers to move
beyond understandings of place as simply “here” – local, fixed, bounded, and, frequently, ahistorical – to more fully engage
the dynamics of place, over time and across spatial scales. A “relational” view of place (Cummins et al. 2007) conceptualizes
it as process rather than entity – a fluid, dynamic field of constantly interacting elements, within and beyond itself. Inherent
in this shift away from conventional, static notions of place is renewed interest in the role of time as a salient factor
in place/health relationships. Cummins et al. (2007), for example, propose the development of research approaches that focus
on not only “the life course of individuals, but also the social and economic trajectories of the places which they inhabit”
(p. 1,832). Popay et al. (2003) have likewise argued for a more thorough-going focus on time, and specifically history, in
research on place and health, particularly in relation to health disparities. This chapter, written from the vantage point
of a scholar of place with historical training, rather than a health disparities researcher, attempts to add further dimensionality
to these proposals.
Casey, 1997:ix This chapter argues that our bodily experience of place may provide a key to achieving a contextualised sense of presence in virtual environments. We begin by briefly reviewing current practice in evaluating virtual environments. The evaluating of these environments hinges on measuring our sense of being there. This is treated as our sense of presence but as we will show this is a curious decontextualised sense of being there. From there we turn to the question of contextualised presence-what it is and why it is becoming important for current and emerging virtual reality (VR) applications. We draw upon the philosophical, empirical and phenomenological treatments of body, place and the conjunction of the two to inform this discussion. We conclude by proposing a new paradigm for designing and evaluating contextualised virtual environments, based on the metaphor of tourism and the tourist gaze (Urry, 2002).
This paper examines the role of design concepts in a modus operandi as opposed to a modus operatum, which is how their generation, as it unfolds over time, is perceived by someone involved in designing instead of with the hindsight of being finished. To this end, the interactive activation and competition model, commonly used to model the retrieval of information from stored knowledge of individual exemplars, is applied in the context of architectural design. Parsing the data of an architect's think-aloud protocol through this model at successive points in the design process results in a photo shoot of a design concept "under construction." This allows for the start of appreciating and accounting for the highly elusive character of concepts during design.
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