dyad of
NESSES

The story of design is one of extremes: of hope and failure, of idealism and pragmatism and of living between oughtness and messiness.53 For often, design disappoints. Many a times for its complete lack of presence in a situation, sometimes for its inadequate comprehension of the situation resulting in an unsatisfactory solution and even for its pretentiousness. Most of the time, we seem to be ‘muddling through’54 or satisficing55 in one way or another through optimal or suboptimal decision-making.

However, to design is not to compromise. To do so is a travesty of design. To design is to bring to fruition a creative response that completes the experience, evoking a feeling of wholeness or fulfilment. To design is to strive for idealism in the face of the impossible.

Some problems, however, just cannot be solved.56 They are intractable57 in nature. This is when the designer needs to curb their enthusiasm. To be humbled by the outcome is no defeat but merely an acceptance of the limits of practice.

  1. “...artefacts are becoming conceivable as complex assemblies of contradictory issues…” read Bruno Latour in A Cautious Prometheus? A Few Steps Toward a Philosophy of Design (with Special Attention to Peter Sloterdijk) (2008).
  2. read Charles E. Lindblom in The Science of “Muddling Through” (1959).
  3. read Herbert A. Simon in Rational Choice and the Structure of the Environment (1956).
  4. Across fields, it is common for problems to remain unsolved. For example, read the Millenium Prize Problems in Mathematics.
  5. read Horst W. J. Rittel and Melvin J. Webber in Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning (1973).