Join Harold Nelson for the discovery of what systemic design is and can be.
In the opening article of Contexts—The Systemic Design Journal, Harold Nelson provides an overview of the field that has grown from design for complex scale and generations of systems thinking. Systemic Design as Born from the Berkeley Bubble Matrix scopes out the fertile ground of the 1960s consciousness revolution, the University of California at Berkeley, and Nelson recounts his time as a PhD student with graduate advisor C. West Churchman.
Out of all of his many projects and accomplishments, most will be familiar with the book The Design Way: Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World, co-authored with Erik Stolterman. The Contexts essay concludes with Nelson’s announcement of his advocacy for the creation of more advanced systemic design programmes in a range of settings and his active work as a systemic triad.
The primary subsystem is the Center for Advanced Systemic Designing, a flight school model that combines formal and experiential learning to prepare professionals for practice. The second component is the design institute for scholar-practitioners, serving their role as instructors and mentors, and the third is the design academy, supporting stakeholder champions and cohort alliances.
Nelson is producing a series of 15 Advanced Systemic Design Master Classes, a self-guided early release to the systemic design flight school that is being continuously released. The Master Classes will include sessions by a range of scholar-practitioners in systemic design.
The series is a precursor to the establishment of the SD flight school and Center for Advanced Systemic Design. And while the initial offering is a self-paced webinar format, interactive, cohort-based courses are in the works.
More information
www.haroldgnelson.com
Session 1, Intentions: systemic designing stance and approach, is now online.
Image: Bubble Nebula by NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team
