Accidental Vagrant

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...

Hardcover | $35.00 Short | £24.95 | ISBN: 9780262018173 | 296 pp. | 6 x 9 in | 102 figures| July 2012 Paperback | ISBN: 9780262526708 | 296 pp. | 6 x 9 in | 102 figures| September 2014

Held a design flight school session (aka 'workshop') with faculty and staff of the Institute for Design at the Oslo University of Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway April 29th. The session was focused on the systemic self-organization of design teams.

A great new book edited by Tiiu Valkla-Poldma has just been released. This is a great collection of designers from a broad variety of backgrounds in design drawn together by Poldma's unique approach to designed space.

  Reviewing Don Norman’s most  recent blog  on design thinking on Core 77’s  site , I was drawn to an earlier post by Norman on the need for  design education to change . I agree that design education needs to change but for other reasons than posted in Norman’s piece. I don’t think design should be scientized or that designers need to become design scientists. I believe that good science is important to the work of designers and that designers need to work with competent scientists, and know how to recognize good science when they see it. It is ideal to have good scientists focused on researching design related issues. For example, sociologists and anthropologists can contribute descriptions and explanations of human behavior to the processes of design inquiry and action, thus assuring better outcomes in the end. Design is not just a form of science anymore than it is just a form of art. It is disciplined and rational but it has its own funda...

A brief encounter with a group of professionals interested in exploring ‘design research’ caused me to revisit a schema I have been developing recently which tries to show the relationship between scientific inquiry—i.e. ‘research’—and design inquiry—i.e. inquiry for action. Fig. 1 Design inquiry for action 'Design' inquiry is inclusive of ‘research’ inquiry, but also incorporates ‘assessment' inquiry and ‘search' inquiry. These three subsets of design inquiry are designed to facilitate wise action when integrated systemically. The three forms of inquiry support dramatically different means of learning and dramatically different learning outcomes separately. Both ‘assessment’ and ‘search’ are as demanding and disciplined as ‘research’ in their own unique ways. Design inquiry is learning what you need to know in order to do what needs to be done in order to secure desired outcomes. It is not only learning about the nature of the world, but also lear...

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