5. C. Some Disciplinary Perspectives 201 5. C. 4. ‘Knowledge, Representation and Architecture … (Leandro Madrazo)
A system may be thought of as both physical and conceptual. In fact, distinguishing between the two is one of the difficulties that the notion of system conveys. This intermingling of the two notions of system is also manifest in architecture. We can think of a building – the actual artefact – as a system made up of subsystems, such as the structure and the envelope; but, in the design stage, we can also conceptualise a building as a system that reacts to the information it receives from an abstract environment. Furthermore, we can consider the whole built environment to be a system made up of physical and abstract subsystems. Accordingly, a region would be made of cities, which are made of neighbourhoods, which, in turn, are made of buildings.189 The convergence of cybernetics and systems theory, in the second half of the 20th century, opened up the possibility of applying computers to the solution of complex problems. This required modelling, in the computer, of not only the problem but also a way of thinking about the problem. As systems thinking arrived in the realm of design, this was transformed into a problem to be solved, then a design was seen not only as an artefact but also as the outcome of a process that was amenable to systematisation and optimisation. It was thought that, by providing the designer with more powerful design tools – i.e. computers – design solutions would improve. According to Francis Ferguson, the system approach is a thought model based on two main principles – holism, or a perception of the relatedness of things, and rationality, or applying methods and procedures to problem solving.190 More recent applications of the notion of system to design thinking acknowledge that design is a wicked problem – that is to say, that design solutions cannot be detached from the formulation of the problem and from the evaluation criteria applied to the solutions. Furthermore, the designer is now seen as a ‘self-organising system who is observing the evolving artefact plus him- or herself observing the evolving model’.191 Nowadays, the idea that the most crucial part of the creative process is the process itself, instead of its final outcome, pervades many creative practices, from art to architecture. The openness of the process promotes the participation of multiple actors, including 189. J. Habraken, The Structure of the Ordinary, Form and Control in the Built Environment. (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1998). 190. F. Ferguson, Architecture, Cities and the Systems Approach. (New York: George Braziller, 1975). 191. W. Jonas, ‘Design Research and its Meaning to the Methodological Development of the Discipline’ in R. Michel (ed.), Design Research Now. (Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag, 2007).