Designing connected places
Places, identities and sustainable development International Summer school
Design and visualization. Diagrammatic tools for complexity. Donato Ricci Politecnico di Milano (ITALY) - INDACO Department. Ph.D. Candidate, donato.ricci@mail.polimi.it It has been argued by Dosi, that when acting within Complex Systems two kinds of difficulties could emerge: the knowledge-gap, the erroneous representation of the reality, and the problem solving-gap, the distance between the problem to be faced and the tools provided to solveit. A key aspect of this argumentation have to be underlined: it is necessary to face the unpredictability of the system evolution starting from the impossibility to reach an exhaustive knowledge of the system in which one operates. In this framework, when design is addressing complexity, its visualization capability could prove to be able to reduce these gaps. This is possible thanks to its communicative ability but also for its in born critical skill of projection towards a possible scenario within a recognisable and workable frame. It seems that, when the discipline of Communication Design integrates a systemic approach with the competences of designers in visualization and representation, it can cope with dense situations, providing effective artefacts - diagrams, primarily making profit from the richness of complexity. Diagrams from this viewpoint could help designer to think clearly on complex problems, revealing the system elements features and their relations. The aim of diagrams is not only to gather extensive knowledge about a system, but to synthesize it in a goaloriented way in order to be able to produce manageable changes in the system itself. Typical design visualization extents, modifies and integrates the descriptive and prescriptive specificity of linear tools. Referring to diagrams as visual narration they could be studied and interpreted to generate new meta-data to find opportunities for changes and development of complex social system. They acquire a generative potential while they become comprehensive writing systems that could facilitate design interventions. Verbal and visual languages
Due to its linear nature, text tends to describe events and realities through discrete and ordered elements: since the origins of scientific thought, text has been the preferred tool as the extensive use of the syllogism demonstrate. Even if non-verbal notational devices as diagrams have been used since long time, systems theory started to question the adequacy of linear tools for the study of Complex Systems only in the 1950s: since then it have been clear that text is not enough to describe reality not only in the scientific context but also in disciplines like design. Much of systems and complexity theory starts from the assumption that some phenomena can only be analysed as a single corpus and that, therefore, the connections between the elements are more important than the nature of the individual elements themselves. Alongside discourse and text, the model should be a mode of representation that does not divide or analyse the elements separately but studies them in an interconnected and indivisible manner. Image thus could assume a role of primary importance: able to describe elements as a whole without dividing them, it becomes an irreplaceable instrument for depicting qualities of systems otherwise difficult to interpret. Referring to the Design discipline all forms of visualisation and representation share the same purpose : communicate knowledge and explicit the intentions that drive the design team and its work. The theme of complexity adds a further level of critical discussion which can be summarised in three macro areas of analysis: ď Ź the prevalence of qualitative and intangible features in the knowledge spaces and in the design environments; ď Ź the conduction of research processes that define an open knowledge; ď Ź the reconfiguration of the design environment as a constellationbased organisation, where the work of the single actor is replaced by the involvement of a heterogeneous system of agents. As regards this last point, it can be added that diagrams, understood as communication artefacts to construct shared strategies and to prefigure the impact of design decisions, possess an enormous potential for the improvement of design processes thanks to the possibilities of involving all Complexity maps