Metadesign

Metadesign (or meta-design) is an emerging conceptual framework aimed at defining and creating social, economic and technical infrastructures in which new forms of collaborative design can take place. It consists of a series of practical design-related tools for achieving this.

As a methodology, its aim is to nurture emergence of the previously unthinkable as possibilities or prospects through the collaboration of designers within interdisciplinarity 'metadesign' teams. Inspired by the way living systems work, this new field aims to help improve the way we feed, clothe, shelter, assemble, communicate and live together.

Team members working in a metadesign workshop organized by researchers at Goldsmiths, University of London (2008)

The Need for Metadesign

In order to address the impending ecological catastrophe it will be vital to change the average person’s mindset and behaviour. However, governments are unlikely to achieve this, especially with a ‘targets and penalties’ approach^[1] because the global economy is driven by acts of consumption. A more creative approach is needed. One solution is to introduce more design thinking ^[2] into governance, because design intervention works more directly (i.e. at the level of lifestyle). However, whereas many designers may be personally conscious of the ecological context, the divisive pressures of the prevailing economic system have proved almost insuperable. Also, most designers are trained - and then paid - to work as specialists with a specific focus. The current professions of design are unable to re-design (consciously) their working practices. This is because, at the professional level, they are currently unable to attain a high level of strategic power. Their specialism may also make it more difficult for them to think 'outside the box', i.e. the familiar mindset of their specific practice. Nor are designers trained to cope, in a competent and responsible way, with the highly complex situations in society as a whole. 'Metadesign' is therefore akin to what Buckminster Fuller proposed as Prime Design. At the practical level metadesign is a way for society to reform itself within its environment by modulating the way it feeds, clothes, shelters, assembles and communicates.

Motivated by the environmentalist and ethical concerns described above, some researchers are working towards the establishment of a metadesign profession. This would comprise a new field of ethical design that works in conditions of great complexity. This may mean that 'metadesign' becomes a superset of co-design, and other methods of design that have emerged over the last fifty or so years. It would operate within entrepreneurial teams that synergise many different disciplines and approaches. It would adapt to its predicament by finding opportunities, and by re-designing itself accordingly. Metadesign aims to create a synergy of benign synergies^[3]. By making these synergies practically useful, and by sharing them within communities, humanity would be able to 'do more with less'. However, synergy is elusive because it does not respect the boundaries of language that underpin our conventional paradigms and sense of reality. Metadesign acknowledges this problem by incorporating an active and creative language-based element within the whole metadesign task (e.g. it may add, or modify key paradigms, metaphors and neologisms). At the strategic level, metadesign acknowledges the principle that synergy requires difference. At the conceptual level this is similar to the possibility-finding technique that Koestler called bisociation. At the ecological level it is similar to symbiosis, or the systemic stability that derives from bio-diversity. Metadesigners may therefore need to seek, and/or co-create a ‘diversity-of-diversities’. This is a difficult prospect that will require collective innovation, development, field-testing, evaluation and refinement.

Metadesign researchers map the positions of their team mates in order to synergise their relations (2008)

History

Metadesign has been initially put forward as an Industrial Design approach to Complexity Theory and Information Systems by Dutch designer Andries Van Onck in 1963, while at Ulm School of Design (later at Politecnico di Milano). Since then, several different design, creative and research approaches have used the name "Metadesign", ranging from Maturana and Varella's biological approach, to Giaccardi's techno-social approach, and Virilio's techno-policital approach.

Later on, a very active group was present at Politecnico di Milano, and several different universities and graduate programs began applying Metadesign in design teaching around the world generally based at Van Onck's approach, further developed at Polictecnico di Milano. Nevertheless, there's a very active, but widely dispersed, group that base their activities at Maturana and Varella's approach.

More recently, some efforts have been made to systematize Metadesign as a structured creative process, such as Giaccardi's and Vassão's academic works ^{[4] [5]}, among several others, based on a much wider reference frame, ranging from Post-structuralist philosophy, Postman's Media Ecology, Alexander's Pattern Languages and Deep Ecology.

This variety of approaches is justified by the myriad interpretations that can be derived from the etymological structure of the term.

Re-designing Design

The Greek word ‘meta’ originally meant ‘beside’ or ‘after’ but is now also used to imply the possibility of change or transformation, including self-transformation. Metadesign can therefore allude to a possible design practice that (re)designs itself (see Maturana and Varela's term autopoiesis). The idea of Metadesign acknowledges that future uses and problems cannot be completely anticipated at design time. Aristotle's influential theory of design defined it by saying that the 'cause' of design was its final state. This teleological perspective is similar to the orthodox idea of an economic payback at the point of sale, rather than successive stages when the product could be seen to achieve high levels of perceived value, throughout the whole design cycle. Some supporters of metadesign hope that it will extend the traditional notion of system design beyond the original development of a system by allowing users to become co-designers.

The Importance of Languaging

Metadesign emphasizes certain explicit relations that are designed to operate at the level of living-style. This is why an effective metadesign profession, or practice needs to be a consensual co-design practice that is entrepreneurial and entredonneurial on many levels. If it is conceived within an eco-mimetic design framework it can be used to reinvent the language that co-sustains existing habits. Our 'metadesign’ methodology seeks to combine existing resources ‘bisociatively’^[6] in order to create an auspicious synergy of benign synergies^[7]. In aspiring to this outcome, metadesign teams will cultivate auspicious ‘diversities-of-diversities’. It suggests that metadesign would offer a manifold ethical space. In this respect, related approaches include what Koestler (1967) called holarchy, or what John Chris Jones called 'creative democracy'.

Metadesign Conceptual Tools

Regarding a wide range of applications and contexts, Vassão has argued that Metadesign can be understood as a set of four "conceptual tools", utilizing Deleuze's understanding of the term "tool":

1 - Levels of Abstraction (the ability to understand the structure and limits of abstractions, language and instrumental thinking);

2 - Diagrams and Topology (the use of diagrammatic thinking and design, sustained by topological understanding);

3 - Procedural Design (the creation of realities through the use of procedures, such as in game and role playing, as well as in procedural design, art and architecture);

4 - Emergence (the absence of absolute control, and the ability to take advantage of unintended and unforeseen results).

Vassão argues that, in all different approaches to Metadesign, the presence of these conceptual tools can be verified.^[8]

See also

Autopoiesis Co-Design Cybernetics Collaboration Complex Adaptive System

Design Design methods Ecology Holarchy Lateral thinking

Sustainable design Systems design Systems thinking

External links

• Attainable Utopias - Definition of Metadesign
• Design Encyclopaedia
• Metadesigners Open Network

References

1. ^ (Meadows, 1995)
2. ^ (Simon, 1969; Brown, 2009)
3. ^ (Fuller, 1975)
4. ^ (GIACCARDI, Elisa. (2003) Principles of Metadesign: processes and levels of co-creation in the new design space. 2003. Doctorate thesis [1]
5. ^ (Vassão, Caio Adorno. Arquitetura livre: complexidade, metadesign e ciência nômade. ("Free Architecture: complexity, metadesign and nomad science"). 2008. Doctorate thesis (in Portuguese). [2]
6. ^ (Koestler, 1964)
7. ^ (Fuller, 1975)
8. ^ (Vassão, Caio Adorno. Metadesign: ferramentas, estratégias e ética para a complexidade. ("Metadesign: tools, strategies and ethics towards complexity.") Blucher, São Paulo, 2010. (in Portuguese) [3]