Håkan Edeholt
The Oslo School of Architecture and Design
After several years of working with industrial design as a tool for exploring the types of radical systemic change that climate change arguably needs, it now seems timely to discuss the systemic approach. Much at odds with current discourse, this article promotes disciplinarity per se and questions the systems oriented design (SOD) assumption, which seems to take for granted that there is an inescapable intimate relation between development and complexity. It is done by revisiting four seminal scholars within system thinking and cybernetics, which arguably were significant for giving rise to the current praxeology of SOD and its continued development. The article makes three brief explorations, covering (i) the ecologic worldview, having nature as a guiding metaphor versus the mechanical having a machine as a guiding metaphor, (ii) the expected turning point for radical climate action and why it has not turned up yet and (iii) the ecology of disciplines and its knowledge production, and how the modes of disciplinary cooperation tend to be, more or less, easy to control. These discussions intend to explore the tensions between the worldviews that direct our understanding and action. The article shows how the worldview makes the methods as much, if not more, than the other way around. Finally, the paper tries to establish a creative dialogue with the SOD community by both questioning its current main focus on the current system’s complexity and, at the same time, suggesting how the SOD praxeology could be potentially much more beneficial if its view instead were directed towards ways to transcend the current system.
Keywords: SOD, radical system change, global warming, calcified worldview, system thinking, industrial design and design agency
RSD: Methods & Methodology
Sketchnote by Patricia Kambitch | Playthink
