tetrad of
SCALES

The designer needs to operate at diverse scales of resolution – macro, meso, micro and, increasingly, nano. Planners or policy makers and designers of algorithms operate at a macro scale when they plan the layout of cities or the design and implementation of social welfare schemes, facial recognitions systems, etc., thus impacting countless numbers of people through their design decisions. Urban designers and architects operate at a meso scale, influencing the design of not just individual buildings but also neighbourhoods, which ultimately enhance or ruin the aesthetics of towns or cities and even the countryside. Designers, engineers and professionals of many trades design and make artefacts at micro scales, from cars and clothes to phones that fit in the palm of our hands and screws and pins that hold things together; while the general populace designs improvisations that deal with everyday exigencies. Increasingly, designers are manipulating matter at a nano scale, invisible to the eye, such as the splicing of DNA.

Scale thus governs our encounters with the world. Will I shape it (participatory policy making, for example), or will my life be permanently shaped by it (a Bill of Rights, for example)? Will I live inside it, or will it live inside me (a pacemaker, for example)? Will I hold it in my hand, or will it hold me (a cradle, for example)? Can I see it with my eyes, or will it see me (a CCTV camera or X-ray machine, for example)?

To grasp scale is to be able to understand not just physical dimensions23 but to grapple with the multidimensional inter-relationships of the things we design to us, to other things and to the natural environment within which we are temporary visitors.

  1. When thinking about scale, the student will find it useful to think about the relationship of artefacts to the human body. See Le Corbusier’s Modular, Leonardo da Vinci’s diagram The Vitruvian Man, and the film Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames.