Skip to main content

revisiting my younger designer

Just revisited a building I designed for the Forest Service 35 years ago. It is a visitor center for the Angeles National Forest 20 miles outside of Pasadena, California. The vision for the visitor center was to serve the educational and recreational needs of the more than 13 million residents of the greater Los Angeles area. It was designed to assist residents of an urban environment to transition into a wild lands environment through formal educational programs and hands on experiential activities.

I designed the building at the same time I had finished my Ph.D. in Social Systems Design at UC Berkeley. As an Accidental Vagrant that is not as disconnected as it may first appear. The building is a physical representation of the influences from my residence in the 'Berkeley Bubble'—an integration of thinking and doing.

The purpose of my visit was to give a presentation to the FS staff and volunteers who had just reopened the visitor center after an extended period of closure due to reduced funding in regional school districts (in the beginning an average of six school buses a day were showing up at the visitor center),  the Federal budget and the effects of a large forest fire that nearly burned the visitor center down.

I was asked to explain the design reasoning for the visitor center, a building that has become a favorite among diverse groups of individuals over time and use. The building is not in an 'architectural style' of the times, then (late 70's early 80's) or now, and people are keenly interested in the thinking that went into the building's genesis. It was an opportunity for me to revisit my younger design self and to rediscover the threads still present in my ongoing design adventures in other systemic design domains.

I used a 'deep design' schema to explain my design process to everyone at my presentation. The point of this schema is to show the relationships of the invisible aspects of a design to the visible aspects of a design—the things we see and experience as reality.


Deep Design

I told them that architecture can be practiced nowadays as a science (people inhabit environmental machines) or an art (people dwell in sculptures) or as a systemic design approach (meaningful design) without penalty. This building, I explained, was an example of the systemic design approach to architecture.



Chilao Visitor Center Deep Design

With all the concern expressed for sustainability, green design, environmentalism and education, I wonder why the Forest Service and regional school districts don't utilize this resource more? Why is this kind of educational experience, especially for children, so low on everyones priority list? This is a means for the young as well as adults to experience the analog, real world in deep and meaningful ways. There are no apps that can substitute for this type of learning experience. So why is it not valued more?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Design, Wicked Problems & Throwness

Horst Rittel is one of the seminal residents in my 'Berkeley Bubble'. Recently a friend and colleague sent me an article about ‘double-wickedproblems’ . I have become ever more aware of the increasing number of references to ‘wicked problems’ in all forms of media that seem to have missed Rittel’s deeper insights . This brought up the concern I have about the use and miss-use of the term ‘wicked problem’.  The term ‘wicked problem’, first introduced by Rittel in West Churchman’s seminars at Berkeley, was in reference to his conceptualization of the impossible challenge of dealing with significant social issues using traditional, rational, ‘problem solving’ methods. In most cases what are miss-diangnosed as ‘wicked problems’ are actually complex or complicated problems that can be simplified or broken into smaller 'tame' problems allowing for a straight forward 'problem solving' approach to be taken. This approach is believed by many to be capable

educational trends

  As I work on starting a new school in 'systemic design' I have discovered that the trends against serious professional and scholarly endeavors are quite real—an extension of the American anti-intellectualism that fuels some of the political agendas in the US nowadays—probably not the best time to try something like creating a new educational experience. Still... This substack by Ted Gioia is an example of some of the trends against investing in serious educational/professional ventures: https://lnkd.in/gxSbniAg The challenge is to find those who do not want to participate in these trends. Gioia and others claim that they are out there. I believe that to be true. The question is how to network with them. They do not, by definition, reside in echo chambers.

Critical Systems Thinking

 Michal C Jackson is a leading scholar in systems thinking, particularly Critical Systems Thinking . This video is highly recommended for those who have a serious interest in systems thinking. Critical Systems Thinking Michael C Jackson   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyOUlTmwel8