Location: 301 College Ave., Seminar Room

Speaker Schedule

Abstract:

“Design is computation,” asserts George Stiny, a professor in the Department of Architecture at MIT. Stiny’s claim is one of many conceptions of design that architects and engineers have developed around information technologies during the last few decades, with significant implications for the social and cultural place of design in society. These claims are both epistemological and social. As a form of computation, design can be both rigorous and seamlessly linked to the work of technologists, economists, and scientists. In the words of Herbert Simon, the disciplines of design can be elevated to the status of “sciences of the artificial.” In this talk, I examine the way that designers use information technologies for visualization, simulation, and fabrication to define their work and its place within a system of professional relationships.

I study design through a socio-technical lens. This approach links design theory and social studies of technology. Design, seen in this way, does not simply happen within a noteworthy social and technological context; design cannot be extracted from this context. My research builds on a history of scholarship by writers like Lewis Mumford, Sherry Turkle, and Peter Galison, who examine how cultures define themselves through the technologies they use and the way they use them. The contribution of my research is to illustrate how designers use information technologies to establish the social relationships and conceptual distinctions that define their work. I examine distinctions between the prescriptive knowledge of regulations and the projected knowledge of simulations, between visual form and visualized performance, and between the identity of the designer and that of the technologist. These conceptual juxtapositions and others underlie the efforts of contemporary architects and engineers to identify new problems for design and extend their own professional jurisdiction.

Bio: