ORDER, DISORDER, COMPLEXITY

Although the relationship between design and complexity has been explored for decades, the theories of complexity have only recently started to influence the debate in the professional community.  This contribution is meant to open a perspective on ways to direct emergent problems for designers that may be grounded in innovative approaches considering complexity both a context for design and a result of design actions. A reflection is claimed on this issue.

As a premise, this paper will try to sketch a map of concepts derived from the complexity  thinking milieu. By outlining a number of these notions it is argued - as others have done - that key concepts central to handling complexity are already familiar to design culture. It will also be argued that the task for designers is not to define or control complexity, but competent navigation through it. Designing within complexity and designing complexity may be two facets of this challenge.

It has been largely argued that acting within complexity involves either substantive challenges to design (increasingly ambiguous boundaries between artefact, structure, and process; increasingly large-scale, local and global social, economic, and industrial frames; an increasingly complex environment of needs, requirements, and constraints) and contextual challenges (a complex environment where many projects or products cross the boundaries of several organisations, stakeholders, producers, and user groups). These challenges advocate a qualitatively different approach to the practice of design: analytic and synthetic planning skills that can’t be attained through practice alone as well as an advanced design culture that is qualitatively different.

The notion of complexity can open promising horizons for designers and educators in design: using holistic visions may turn into a broader sense of reality, meaning rapid ability to adapt to changes, to be part of change itself, to take uncertainty as a chance (not only as a risk or a limit), to rely on processes (rather than structures), to develop skills of organisation, disorganisation and re-organisation.

As a general objective this paper is intended to foster  unconventional  thinking  between design and some disciplinary areas of complexity, in an effort to bridge some traditional disciplinary boundaries. This contribution is also expected to sustain arguments for a theory rich and interdisciplinary design education, providing the background to handle complexity from a design angle.