Methodology and Ideology. Providing tools for designers who want to coordinate their work.

Methodology is about ways of working. In the sixties methodologists often tried to model how design decisions could be put in a proper sequence. There is some consensus about the cyclic nature of the creative process, but design as a sequence of explicit decisions follows an erratic route that is impossible to be mapped in advance. Our attention moves back and forth from the larger concept to the detail, from abstraction to materialization and from program to space in a largely intuitive and personal manner that escapes modeling.

A more fruitful way to understand methodology is to see it as the study and development of design tools. Tools as well are about ways of working. Good tools allow the carpenter to do things he cannot do without them. But the sequence in which the carpenter uses his tools is best left to his own judgment and the job at hand. In design too, there is a direct relation between a designer’s toolbox and her ability to handle complex projects. For that reason one would expect among the profession a keen interest in the nature and development of design tools. But the opposite is true. Attention to method is absent in both professional discourse and education. As a result a common vocabulary to discuss method is lacking, much less is there a well-established research program.

The reason for that anomaly lies in the profession’s outdated ideology that is entirely focused on self-expression and sees architectural design exclusively as a creative process. The creative process is indeed a personal and largely inscrutable affair and self-expression has no need for any discipline. But those of us who see a need for coordination among designers need method. The most basic example of a design tool is the system of measurement. Sharing the centimeter or the inch as a unit of measurement helps to convey design information with precision. Familiar concepts like type and pattern as well are such tools. More generally therefore, method is about what designers share. Unfortunately, the concept of sharing is alien to the self-referential mind.

But the real world of everyday environment demands otherwise. There we do such things as office buildings, shopping malls, schools and residential buildings. Everyday environment of quality demands sharing concepts of form-making among designers who operate in a common context. Moreover, the complexity of present environment and the ubiquity of increasingly large projects demand distribution of design tasks. Which raises the methodological question as to how that can be done best. And for which we need to know what the distributed tasks have in common. For these reasons a good case for methodology can be made, and some examples will be given as to what that may entail.

N. John Habraken
Professor Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, studied architecture at Delft Technical University, NL. He was director of SAR (Foundation for Architects' research) from 1965 to 1975, where he initiated research in the design of residential Open Building projects. In 1967 he was appointed to Eindhoven Technical University to set up its Department of Architecture and serve as first chairperson. He came to the Department of Architecture at MIT in 1975, to serve as Head until 1981, and continued to teach and research methods and theory of architecture and urban design at MIT till his retirement in 1989.

His book "The Structure of the Ordinary" (1998, MIT Press) is an investigation of laws governing built environment as revealed by patterns of transformation. His latest book "Palladio’s Children" (2005, Taylor and Francis) is about the relation between architects and everyday environment.

John Habraken is recipient of the 1988 Creative Achievement Award of the Association of Collegiate Schools in the US; the David Roëll prize 1979 of the Dutch Prince Bernhard Fund, The King Fahd award for design and research in Islamic Architecture 1985-86, and the Oevre Award for 1996 of the Dutch National Foundation for Art, Design and Architecture. He is honorary member of the Architectural Institute of Japan and Doctor Honoris Causa of the Technical University of Eindhoven. He received the 2003 award of merit from the Dutch Architects Association BNA. N. John Habraken presently lives in the Netherlands.