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The STEALTH group:
Ana Dzokic
Milica Topalovic
Marc Neelen
Ivan Kucina
WILD: occurring, growing without supervision or restraint;
the urban paradigm of ontemporary Belgrade
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THE WILD CITYGenet ics of uncont rolled urban processes
The Wild City research project
inspects the city in crisis a
complex, trembling ground on
which rules for production of
urban substance and logic for
preserving of urban vitality areconstantly reinvented. It spans
over two conceptual territories:
metaphorical, which describes
an urban paradigm of wildness,
and strategic, which proposes
dynamic design procedures for
contemporary environment,
shaped by dominant marketforces and decline of
institutions.
not domesticated, cultivated or tamed; the wild city is
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Its not only in this part of the world that people sell fake perfumes and fake cigs. It
works anywhere; those detectives are all over. But I guess its more intensive
here, simply because it gained so much momentum and undoubtedly a
very large part of the population exists on it. In the same way, there are
people who made careers in the practices of the ad-hoc,
improvisation, on-black, on-grey. whatever you want to call
it.
Afterwards you will put the money into another practice
that is profitable, but legal. Then it becomes another
story, those are already mega-facilities, for example
entertainment ones.
(Where were you supplied with cigarettes? You
remember the trucks in the city center?)How could I tell about that? That is what you
know. Dont think its some kind of paranoia, I
simply think its not necessary. We are not
exposing any glamor here, I think the story is
just between us, to remember and to be
warned.
Foreigners should come here. They could
learn all kinds of things football, basketball
. . . survival.
Everything is in changes; without change
there is no life. It usedto be like that, nowits
like this, tomorrow it will be different.
Obviously, this is a living mechanism; it didnt
come about overnight. About those people,
it wasnt easy to go out into the street
while someone else was there all along,
and for him it was normal and things
even started to work in his favor. Healready got stronger in this competition,
he has courage, heart, knows how to
fight, those are todays qualities
necessary for normal living.
I think that this jumble is a strong
alternative*. If you can organize yourself a
bit better, if you are persistent, determined,
you can make a career. If you are not, you can
live from hand to mouth. It can choke you, like
the guy next to you who has 3 brands of cigarettes
more. One cardboard box will eat another one, which is
perfectly normal.
My name is Petar Miucin, but in the city I am known as Pera
Lozac (Pera the Firestarter). Thats how you can ask for
me if you need something when you come to Belgrade.
iduals, simultaneously, as a compensation for
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38
Genetics of uncontrolled urban processes
GREY REALMWithout the necessary functions of
institutional systems in society and in the
city, personal initiative appeared as the
only possibility for fulfilling demands and
became the fuel for the move from the
previous, centralised economy todisperse, a-legal, chaotic stage.
During the last decade, the described
condition - the Grey Realm has become an
envelope for the human condition in
Belgrade.
The most radical reconfiguration of the
city came about with the street trade
entering public space and reshaping it.
Over the past decade, in evolution* from a
simple to a more complex spatial disorder,
street trade underwent six phases from
mobility to creation of new urban forms.
EVOLUTION: continuous progress from the homogenous to t
simple to the diverse and manifold in quality and function
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In early stages of the processes, streettraders have blossomed along the lines of f lux
while phenomena rapidly intensified towardsthe city centre. The fast fluctuating, horizontal
movement of this huge network simply routedaround any institutional authority, keeping
mobile in order to escape legal prosecution.
mobil i ty _1
l ightness _2
occupation _3
legis lat ion _4
sol idi f icat ion _5
new forms _6
The non-stop, 24-hour rhythm brought to thecity came from the exceptional flexibility of
tradesman functioning on a small scale.
Channels for supply are numerous, the usualtax and bureaucracy are avoided, which
enables new trade to react instantly and offerdesired goods.
Grey circulation of currencies became theonly controller of the spatial growth. Profitable
trading spots became ever more compressedwhile new public centres are being formed. Allavailable public and void space of the city
turned into a testing ground for new commerceand shapes gradually through dense
juxtaposition of formally unrelated units.
The resulting transformation into new spatial
and organisational typologies is largely due todynamic relations between individuals andinstitutions. Officials sought participation in
processes by providing temporal supportelements, such as stands, kiosks, dedicated
trading locations with infrastructure.
Subverting institutional intentions, the
legislation gave further momentum to solid,physical definition of condensed, vivid spaceof street commerce through which its course
became irreversible.
The heterogeneous constellation of changingterritories, ownerships, diverse types of tradeand spontaneous architectures re-maps the
city by producing multiple points of uncertainpotentials.
e heterogeneous in structure, and from the single and
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atomised,pixelated,
small entities
95 419
wild buildingsregistered,
unofficialestimations
200 000
1 out of 10 citizens
of Belgrades centralzone has built wildin the past 10 years
Wild history
of Belgradein numbers:
1975: 17 9031995: 33 5942001: 95 419
SECTION THROUGH THE CITY
tramline no.7, 15 km
_characters
_figuresas presented indaily newspaper Blic,jan-feb 2000
temporary
Amidst the disintegration of formerYugoslavia, war, media obsession and thepoliticisation of everyday life, the crucialpoint for a complete turn over of the city wasthe UN embargo of 1992. During a decade ofinstability, the governmental grip on the
society weakened dramatically by economic,demographic and social crisis.
Instead, emergent processes have replacedthe citys primary systems in the domains oftrade, housing production and publicservices. In the beginning of the presentdecade, they were accounting for 50% of saleof everyday goods, 60% of petrol sale, 65 % ofcity transport and 70% of any construction
activity.
The concentration of activities in publicspace was supported, in a liberal manner, bythe city municipalit ies. Their attempt to insurean independent source of income from thebankrupt state resulted in a compromiseabove the law, and a fast commercialisation ofpotent public ground. In this process, hardlyany spatial regulations were implemented.
The main concentrations of urban sprawl* aresituated along the lines of flux, the citysattraction points and outlets of trafficinfrastructure.
FLOOD OF
CHANGES
URBAN SPRAWL: uncontrolled growth of compact urban c
existing buildings
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in depth
densification
adaptation strategies:
camouflage
temporarity
lightness, mobility
inventive use ofmaterials and forms
created by
all social classes
LegalisationCity will profit5 billion DM
DemolitionCity will pay3 billion DM
posseses
emergent
behavior
anarchistic:
creates and
follows no
rules
aesthetic
heterogeneity
parasiticalno recognisable
geometry
wild center vswild periphery:
73 045 vs 22 374
750 wild
construction
sites opening
per weekin the city
concentrations,
and forces, not
shapes
mobile
lightsolid
inward
ntres, with extensions into public, void space and onto
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One of the new wild housing areas in the perimeterBelgrade consists of approx. 1000 houses. It is built oncity land, in the process of denationalisation. In fearthat their constructions could be demolished, individualbuilders have obtained an existing plan for the area,and reproduced the same street pattern themselves.
01_ 01 _worm M i n i m a l p l a n 01_ 02 _infection G r o w t h i n w a v e s
The Flea market - one of the targeted locations for
informal commerce was a piece of no-mans land in
New Belgrade, on a major traffic junction. In just 5
years it became the largest trading centre in the
country that continues to grow through perpetual
waves of legislation and informal invasion.
urban scale_0 1
URBAN
READY-MADES
In this continuing process of change the cityacts as a machine for production of new urbanforms and as generator of its own substance.Innovations are present across all scales andon different levels: spatial/physical,architectural typology, ownership,organisational structure, program.
Catalogue of emerged forms proposes themas ready-made prototypes. Purpose ofregistration of eachprototype* is to point outnewness that it produces, to describe itsprototypical features and to show thepossibility of its applying.
On the conceptual level the Wild City is anincubator* of new urban forms in which anurban planner becomes a hunter in the jungle,the one who searches for new species andcultivates them.
catalogue of new urban forms
PROTOTYPE: an original urban form or instance, serving as
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Along 5 km of riverbanks, uncontrolled ordeliberate ly overlooked developments in theleisure sector have their peaks. The boats are notonly linearly ordered, but form a f loating fabricover the water. The watery condition producedthe ultimat e negation of the city, its weight and itspresence.
01_04_v i rus Inward expansion
01_ 01 _worm M i n i m a l p l a n
Level of inventiveness / Prototypical features:
- minimal plan consists just of infrastructure- permanently unfinished state
- free standing houses on plots without propertyboundaries create sensitive gradation from public to
private space
- insensitivity to social status
Cultivation:
- assign area for development of individuallycommissioned or do-it-yourself housing
- do not exceed diameter of walking distance- lay down minimal plan
- regulate / impose absence of fences- make available network of architectural advisors
- for purposes of enriching the catalogue, monitor if andhow the prototype will mutate
In the process of in-depth densification of the city,built extensions vary across all city fabrics:internationalist, XIX century compact blocks, loose,fragmented structures.
01_ 03 _worm I m p e r m a n e n t g r o u n d
basis or standard for the design practice
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04_01 / 02 E x p a n d i n g p u b l i c p r i v a c y > > >
Often illegal, housing extensions have densifiedall types of existing city fabrics. They result inrefreshing combinations of typologies, such asrural houses on top of skyscrapers.
Boosting square meters over the permissionlimit? Making ghost floors? Mushrooms are aformal synonym for architectural masking.
architectural typology_ 0 2
02_01 P a r a s i t e h o u s i n g 02_02 M u s h r o o m r o o f s
The network of mobile petrol traders quicklyconsolidated, resulting in new private petrolstations, constructed at sites tested-out by mobilepredecessors.
Without gasoline and spare parts, the citytransport had to transform into a symbiotic modelconsisting of the old public company joined bynumerous one man one vehicle enterprises.
organizational structures_ 0 3
03_ 01 S y m b i o s i s 03_ 02 C o n s o l i d a t i o n
On a sidewalk of the most frequented BelgradeBoulevard, a plastic kiosk was placed with atemporary permit. Over 2 years, this structurepassed through 3 solidification phases and as
conversions public / private_ 0 4
use of mobile objects_ 0 5
many changes in program the addition of awooden-frame cafe space, a concrete basementand a roof shade into which a living space ishidden.
05_02 C a r s _ t r u n c k05_ 01 B o x e s
INCUBATOR: an idea of a city of permanent urban innovation; o
development of new urban species
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Challenging the borders of housing typology, theowner of a private city transport company madehis bus-garage villa in a part of a wildneighbourhood.
Wild houses range from modest ones, todreamland villas. They are built on the public land,in a wide belt of city perimeters.
02_ 03 A utarchic dream s 02_ 04 P r o g r a m m a t i c h y p e r t r o p h y
Public swimming pool turned into private tenniscourt.
In mid-90s, the first Chinese traders came toBelgrade. Quickly, their population grew to 50 000.Soon they overtook a redundant shopping centreand turned it into the Chinese centre.
03_ 03 H o m o g e n e i t y 03_ 04 I n v e r s i o n o f i n s t i t u t i o n s
05_ 03 C a r s _ f r o n t
Linear repetition of the described maskedtypology, along the pavement of frequentedstreets produces commercial strips.
The whole citys ground zero became a commercialasset. The spaces being converted range fromcommon rooms in housing blocks of theinternationalist New Belgrade, to flats and homesin the old city.
04_03 P r i v a t e p u b l i c n e s s
05_ 04 C a r s _ e x t e n d e d
e which permits and encourages the formation and
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PARADOX: a proposition contrary to the prevailing practic
appearance or terms seems absurd, yet may be true
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Extended Lada, used as a funeral car. At themoment, there are four of them in Belgrade.
; a sentiment seemingly contradictory; that which in
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department store
beogradjanka
inertiathe department
store still at itsoriginal statein thebeginning of1993
2.
3.
attractorin the autumn
of the sameyear, the publicspace aroundthe storebegins to beoccupied bystreetsalesman
loosening
boundarythe state-owned storestarts partiallyrenting itsspace to smallprivate shops
shrinkingin mid 1993, as
a result of theembargo, thedepartmentstore remainsout of goods
1.
For a period of one year, themajority of department stores inthe city were left without supplies,having only few products to sell.This example of a department storeillustrates the process of inversion- where institution changed from atrade into a management
organisation that rents its spaceand shares it with smaller privatetraders.
time/space mapping of transformation process
METAMORPHOSIS
BENEFICIAL VIRUS: alien presence, instigated by a degradin
corrupting and vital force
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4.
5.
The 3D sequential mapping is developed as away to visualise physical and organisationalevolution. These models contain informationabout the establishment of new relationsamong actors, change of boundaries and
physical containment - over time. Organicshapes present self-organised initiators of
partial
recoverybenefiting formthe neweconomicinflux, thedepartmentstore regains apart of itstrading space
subdivisiononce open inplan, the spacebecomesseparated
double skinattachments to
the buildingmade by privateinvestorsappear, some-times using adoubled faadeas a camouflage
change entering primary system. They becomemore regular in the upper sections of themodel (later phases in time) which correspondwith a period of physical change. The colourspresent different levels of institutional
recognition.
institutional body, which becomes an inevitable,
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Through Urban genetics* mechanics of atransformat ion processes are ext racted. Innearly all of the studied processes,ranging from street t rade to ci ty t ransport,
a: shrink
b: surround attractor,be soft
a: loosen
boundary
b: push boundary,
step in
a: subdivide territory
without clear
boundaries
b: fill in subdivided
territory
a: expand by double skin
b: camouflage into double
skin
a: shrink
b: -
a: further shrinking
b: push boundary, make
various tactics
a: open boundary
for selected tactic
b: intensify by
growing in
numbers
a: -
b: grow network nodes
by merging
public transport:department store:
a: abandon the system
b: surround attractor,
be soft
a: tolerate
b: extend structure by
adding units
a: tolerate
b: disperse fromcentral point
a: offer empty
structure
b: find empty
structure
a: rise valueb: intensify by growing in
numbers, form homogeneity
a: tolerate
b: spread from units into
in-between space
cd market:shopping centre:
a: give structure: line up!
b: selection to fill in
the structure
invert
homogenize
branch
fertilize
GENETIC CODESpulsating organisations are achieved,through conflict and negotiation betweeninstitutions and individuals. They resembleprofound symbiotic natural forms and
URBAN GENETICS: discovering the inherent scripts of unfores
that their outcomes are more sophisticated than the designed
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systems, in which the small elements(individuals-orange) are in charge ofproducing newness and flexibility, whilethe big core (institution-grey) maintains
the minimum of stability. Tip: take a look atthe public transport code and prototype03_01.
a: shrink
b: disperse alonglines of flux
a: -b: concentrate in zones that
are more attractive, be soft
a: give structure: line up!
b: selection to fill in the
structure
a: offer new
structure in
public space
b: solidify in
zones that are
more attractive
a: tolerate
b: connect by filling
in-between space,
be soft
a: -
b: find void attached to linesof flux, occupy by dispersion
a: define strict
territoryb: concentrate
within defined
territory, be soft
a: give structure and
program to territory use
b: selection to fill in
structure
a: form solid double skin
b: fill in the double skin
a: tolerate surrounding
development
b: concentrate and solidify
in the surrounding
flea market: street trade:
a: -
b: surround attractor,
be soft
a: tolerate
b: step in, occupy
in-between space,
be softa: share units
b: plug into the units
a: keep remaining territory
b: form territory over group
of units
a: shrink
b: -
a: -
b: disperse along
lines of flux
a: tolerate
b: form network
a: tolerate
b: differentiate
nodes by
concentration
a: permit
b: solidify strong nodes
by adding another
program
green market: petrol selling:
stratify
disperse
coagulate
infiltrate
en processes of urban transformations under a hypothesis
ones
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e m p t y
s t r u c t u r es u r r o u n d
In the example of a green market, which actsas multy-agent system, a simulation test wasmade.
Heterogeneous and vivid spatial formationappears as the main value of the tool. Itcomes through ranges that are achieved in
every spatial parameter range of differentscales, range of material qualities from solidto temporary, range from still to mobile,range in different forms of ownership, rangein use throughout day and night, stretchingthe program in a range.
1 2 3
i n -
b e t w e e n
Following the exciting discovery that there isa pattern of similar behaviours among urbangenes- stages of the observed processes -these sequences have been collected anddeveloped as an urban design support tool -the Game of Life*. It started with afascination and a question: can there be asophisticated outcome of the evolutiveprocess if it continues further and further?
While its rules are fairly simple, thecomplexity that arises from it is able tomaintain the character of a self-organisingsystem.
Originally, Life is a cellular-automata game, created
in 1970 by J.H.Conway, in the field of artificial life.
GAME OF LIFE
LIFE: synonym for evolutive design, rather than the magazine,
state of existence
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m e r g ee x t e n dp l u g - i n
24ho
urrythm
diversifying
trade
new
regu
latory
body
new
shar
ed
mana
geme
nt
blurin
g
publi
c-priva
te
i n -
b e t w e e n
green market - steps of simulation
hunc
h
4 5 6 7
Kalenicmarket,B
elgrade
MaksimaGorkog
St.
he breakfast cereal, the 1950s-era game board or the human
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Today, while normality (read globalisation) iscoming to Belgrade, the phenomena observedare on the verge of being erased. On theestablished path of, commonly called,transition in Eastern Europe, planning
institutions are providing ground for an easyclutch of a citys assets into the global world.In this condition, the aesthetics of the wildspace found among the street traders and thedo-it-yourself interventions will slowlyvanish.
The political aspect of the Wild City projectHowever, the message of the wildness reachesmuch further than its appearance. For a period
of 10 years, the Wild City has created an
WITHOUT
PREJUDICE
CRISIS: a crucial or decisive moment or situation, a sudden
rather than deterioration
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unconventional social condition incontemporary Europe. A fairly primitive, butrapid formation of a liberal market at itsextreme, shows an example not determined byicons of global capitalism, but a romantically
anarchist universe of ordinary people going fortheir everyday needs and dreams.
On the city scale, this condition has pointedout to: multitude, variety, dispersion, physicalgrowth through decentralisation,fragmentation, heterarchy, networkorganisations.
This reality of Belgrade allows us to imagine
and speculate about public policy in which
economies of scale are substantially lessimportant than economies of variety andflexibility. The new and desired institutionalstructure is then created not to reverse, but tosupport emerging processes with a clear,
social agenda.
The Wild City evolved and sustained itselfthrough economic, social and politicalruptures. It is an architectural creed: it offersno certainty and stabile solutions, it has notolerance for professional prejudice. Instead, itallows us to enter the field of changes of asocial and urban environment with ways to
observe them and to navigate them.
hange in the course of events, often towards improvement
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Design has to change if it is to be effective, or evenmeaningful, in today's context. It has to lighten up,big-time. A few years ago we were promised that theInternet would usher in a weightless new economy ofmind over matter. But life has become heavier thanever, physically and psychologically. We live in aworld of human, natural, and industrial systemswhose complex interactions are difficult tocomprehend. These systems are, by their natures,invisible, and we lack the clear mental models that
we might otherwise use to make sense of the biggerpicture.
We've wallowed too long in the idea that the world is'out of control' - be it cities, the economy, ortechnology. But we're people, not ants. We have aculture, and language, that enable us to understandand share knowledge about abstract phenomena.
Against this background, projects like The Wild Citybring us good news. Although this project is aboutthe genetics of uncontrolled urban processes, its
trajectory aims towards techniques of interventionand control. While The Wild City is taking thisapproach in architecture, in the worlds of LargeTechnical Systems and software design whole flocksof like-minded birds are already developing similarconcepts, however tricky it will be to operate amongcomplex and dynamically changing systems.This transformation of the design process has twoaxes. The first axis concerns the understanding andperception of the processes that shape today'sshifting urban conditions. The second axis is about
intervention, in a 'sense-and-respond' manner--adesign process in which we are 'blind' to the preciseoutcome of the processes we put in motion, but clearabout the kind of future we want to see emerge.
Design for legibility
In order to do things differently, we first might learnto see things differently, to re-connect with thesystems and processes on which we depend, and tounderstand them in order to look af ter them. Theemerging model of design and architectureincorporates what we know about the behavior of
biological organisms, the geometry and informationprocessing systems of the brain, and the morphologyof information networks.Many affective representations of complexphenomena have been developed in recent times:physicists have illustrated quarks; biologists havemapped the genome; doctors have describedimmune systems in the body, and amongcommunities; network designers have mappedcommunication flows in buildings; managers have
charted the locations of expertise in theirorganizations. But these representations have beencreated and used mainly by and among specialistsas objects of research, not as the basis for feedbackand sense-and-respond processes. City life willalways exist on the edge of chaos, butrepresentations of energy flows are an achievablepriority.
The strength of The Wild City is that its researchershave 'grown' a catalogue of processes and changemechanisms from the ground up, based on street-level research over a number of years. Theinteractions between non-regulated processes(street traders moving into spaces vacated bydefunct official businesses) and existing city fabrics(the green market, or a department store) are
fascinating. And in my view, the main point of theproject has been to deliver tools for perceiving'actors' and 'forces' that previously did not figure (soto speak) in urban design notations.
If I have a reservation (or a wish for a next step) it isthat all process representations could be madevisceral, in order to develop not just anunderstanding but a feeling of how complex urbanflows and processes work.
Sense-and-respond
The purpose of systems literacy is to enable action,rather than watching from outside, and to develop ashared vision of what might be done together, andhow. Our dilemma is that evolution operates withoutprior knowledge of what is to come, that is, withoutdesign. The point is to re-discover intentionality andlearn--once we can read them--how to shapeemergent processes.
A first step here is learning how to think backwardsfrom a desired outcome. To identify the things thatneed fixing, and to foster creativity in the search for
new questions, we can become expert at 'back-casting', developing future scenarios and trackingconsequences retroactively, from then to now. Onthat backwards road, we can develop the capacity tospot opportunities at the junctures between physicaland virtual networks, and to imagine relationshipsand connections where none existed before, in muchthe same way as processes are visualized in TheWild City.
How best might we use design scenarios of
desirable futures as the basis for real-worldinterventions to 'steer' complex urbantransformations? How shall we connect anunderstanding of urban genetics with real-timeactions to nudge 'self' organizing systems in adesired direction? Understanding emergentbehavior, how shall we develop strategies to 'steer'it?
Beyond the artificial
I will respond to these questions first with anegative. The answer does not lie in the development
of autonomous or so-called intelligent design tools,such as genetic algorithms and cellular automata.The Artificial Intelligence (AI)) community hasshown that it is feasible to design self-generatingcodes that have the capacity to plot the lines ofcomplex shapes, such as a boat hull. The propositionwas that 'intelligent', generative design tools mighthelp architects and designers design the processesor codes, the 'rules of the game' or 'shapegrammars' by which forms are generated, rather
John Thackara
YOULL HAVE
TO BE IN THEWORLD
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than the end product itself in detail. One researcher,John Fraser (then at the Architectural Association inLondon) said that this means designing the overallsystem;"you design the rules, rather than the actualindividual stylistic detail of the product".
With his synthetic world Tierra, the softwareresearcher Tom Ray looked at autonomous digitalevolution in a different way. In Tierra, Ray observedthe incredibly dynamic evolution of self-replicatingprogram strings, basically virus-like structures, thathe had 'seeded' in this synthetic environment. Thecomplexity produced by such viruses far exceededthe think-then-do capacities of human designers.The software designer of the future, Tom Rayspeculated, would be like a hunter in this jungle,searching for program strings possessing desirable
characteristics for a particular application or contextback in the real world.
But neither shape-generating algorithms, nor self-replicating software viruses, are appropriate for thecontinuous intervention in continuously evolvingurban systems. There are at least three reasons forthis. First, urban processes are not shapes. Second,self-replicating software does not allow for sense-and-respond feedback. Third, intelligent design toolsare just that: tools. They can and do existindependently of the physical and social context
without which a sense-and-respond design processis impossible. In biology, the influence on a processof geographic or regional environment is describedas choronomic. Choronomy adds value; a lack ofcontext destroys it.
Extremely Agile
The irony is that while real-world place-and-thingdesigners have been flirting with AI and evolutionarydesign processes, the most advanced softwaredesigners, who call themselves ExtremeProgrammers, are headed in the opposite direction,
back towards human-steered design. ExtremeProgrammers prefer to do it, rather than watch it.They have come to value individuals, andinteractions among them, over abstract processesand tools. They find it more important to engagedirectly with working software than to labor at thedesign of self-organizing systems. These principlesare the basis of a new movement in software calledThe Agile Alliance.
The Agile movement, and Extreme Programmers, are
not anti-methodology. They want to restore abalance. "We embrace modeling, but not in order tofile some diagram in a dusty corporate repository.We embrace documentation, but not hundreds ofpages of never-maintained and rarely-used tomes.We plan, but recognize the limits of planning in aturbulent environment".
Flowing to a conclusion
We've filled the world with complex systems andtechnologies - on top of the natural ones that werealready here, and social/cultural systems ones that
evolved over thousands of years. For a while we weretold these systems were 'out of control' - toocomplex to understand, let alone to shape, or re-direct. But 'out of control' is an ideology, not a fact.There is something we can do. It's called design, the"first signal of human intention".
Our intentions for social quality, for sustainability,for play will remain wishful until we complete the
in the world. Natural, human and industrial systemsare all around us they are not below, outside, orabove us. This new subject-object relationship indesign entails a shift from a concern with objectsand appearances, towards a focus on enhancedperceptions of complex processes - and theircontinuous optimisation. Think of world as a verb,not a noun. Think of rowing the boat, not just drawingit.
A second transition is from designing for people todesigning with us. The reason is that anyone using asystem - responding to it, interacting with it, feedingback into it - changes it. People are described asusers, or consumers but we need to think of themas actors. Complex Technical Systems be theyphysical, or virtual, or both - are shaped,
continuously, by all the people who use them.
Our business models in design also have to change.The idea of a self-contained design project ofsigning off, when a design is finished - make nosense in a world whose systems dont stop changing.Designs project-based business model is like awater company that delivers a bucket of water to
your door and pronounces itsmission accomplished.Design is a service utility,not a manufacturing process.
I imagine a design economybased on service contractssuch as those already usedin management consultancy.
As designers, our roletherefore evolves fromshaping, to steering -from being the authorsof a finished work, intofacilitators who helppeople act moreintelligently, in amore design-minded way,in thesystemsthey livein. Its akind ofdeonticstreettheatre in
which theregisseur-designercontributesquestions,proposalsand designconcepts,but notfinishedscripts.
