Philosophy of Design

If one accepts that engineering design is the business of a collective or team and that different participants, with different competencies, responsibilities and interest 'see' the object of design differently, then the question arises: how do they harmonize their claims and proposals throughout the course of design? For that matter, how does any one participant, working alone, exercising his or her expertise, transform ideas of function into plans which ultimately fix the form and structure of the product? We explore the possibility of extending the scope of language to include artifacts of process -sketches, bits and pieces of hardware -to see how they might serve to bridge thought and object. k c

Design steht seit seinen Anfängen immer wieder in der Kritik, entweder einer kapitalistischen Warenästhetik Vorschub zu leisten oder dem Selbstmissverständnis der Autonomie zu verfallen. Als Abkömmling der Industrialisierung und Zögling der freien Künste scheint es zwischen den Extremen einer Drapierung von Ingenieursleistungen oder dem kommerziellen Missbrauch von Kunstpraktiken zu schwanken, selbst innerlich zerrissen und ohne eigene Orientierung. Wenn bei Design also von Ästhetik die Rede ist, entsteht schnell der Eindruck, es mit bloßem Styling zu tun zu haben, sei es im Dienst einer Absatzsteigerung oder des symbolischen Kapitals.
Die Tagung möchte demgegenüber ausloten, ob und inwieweit die Ästhetik des Designs – jenseits der Alternative von Warenförmigkeit bzw. Styling und Autonomie – als eigene Form des Ästhetischen verstanden werden kann. Gegenüber der in der ästhetischen Tradition vorherrschenden Ausrichtung an der Kunst geht es der Tagung insgesamt darum zu fragen, was es heißen könnte, die Grundfragen und die Grundbegriffe der Ästhetik noch einmal aus dem Geiste des Designs neu und erneut zu denken. Dabei steht ein solcher Versuch nicht allein angesichts der jüngsten Entgrenzungstendenzen zwischen Kunst
und Design vor der Herausforderung, dass eine Ästhetik des Designs in irgendeiner Weise auch zur Ästhetik der Kunst in Beziehung gesetzt werden muss. Nicht zuletzt stellt sich dabei die Frage, was „Kritik“ mit Blick auf Kunst und Design jeweils heißen kann.

Im Zuge der Debatten um ökonomische wie soziale Nachhaltigkeit und angesichts der Tatsache, dass Soziologie und Kulturwissenschaft die Dinge vermehrt hinsichtlich ihrer Rolle in gesellschaftlichen Prozessen reflektieren, sind soziale Dimensionen des Designs in den letzten Jahren besonders virulent geworden. Gegenwärtig entsteht verstärkt eine Designkultur, die ihre Zeitgemäßheit auf unterschiedliche Art und Weise durch soziale Relevanz herauszustellen versucht und im Zuge dessen auch vermehrt mit der Reflexion der eigenen Praxis beschäftigt ist. Das Design wird nicht nur deshalb zunehmend politisiert, weil globale soziale Missstände – wie Chancen- und Verteilungsungerechtigkeit oder Flucht und Migration – medial vermittelt besonders sichtbar sind, sondern auch weil sich das Verständnis sozialer Prozesse geändert hat. Der Beitrag zeichnet diese Änderung des Verständnisses von 'Social Design' anhand einer ethischen, immateriellen und interaktiven Lesart nach und entwickelt ein einleitendes Verständnis der zwischenmenschlichen Dimensionen von Design.

Toilets in modern water closets rise up from the floor like water lilies. The architect does all he can to make the body forget how paltry it is, and to make man ignore what happens to his intestinal wastes after the water from the tank flushes them down the drain. Even though the sewer pipelines reach far into our houses with their tentacles, they are carefully hidden from view, and we are happily ignorant of the invisible Venice of shit underlying our bathrooms, bedrooms, dance halls, and parliaments. Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being All is designed A cursory look at our surroundings should suffice to show that our lives are carried out in the depth of a designed environment. So prevalent is the presence of design in our experience that the fact that our environment is designed has become transparent and in this transparency, invisible. Sheltered in the inconspicuousness and normalcy of daily use, the normative might of the rules that issue from the objects of our use determining our customary doings becomes lost from view. Virtually all our doings—both voluntary and, more remarkably, involuntary actions—are framed, determined, oriented and guided by our interactions with objects of human invention and manufacture. Nature, our own and around us, has been counterfeited. This, however, is not necessarily a bad thing. The park, the animal, the field, the sky and the mountain, all those things that we insist in calling 'nature' are little more than impostors. By design, nature has receded out of sight and the often-heard political summon of its proverbial purity expressing naturalist appeals to biological authenticity are politically suspect. We are not in nature and the traces of nature that remain with us are the product of our invention. By design,

Although not new, in recent years a reconfigured and reciprocal interest between design and science has been explored and celebrated, bringing new possibilities for human knowledge and development. A prolific form of this relationship is the use of design as creator of visualizations and mappings of technoscientific knowledge. In a society in which the dematerialized technoscientific information given form by communication design, transmitted through information technologies, plays a main role, is progressively harder to grasp its mediation.
This paper brings into question communication design objects that create the visualization of complex information, how these in-form the world and possible reconfigurations of the communication design discipline. If the abundance of these design objects causes a closer relationship of people with scientific knowledge, it is also argued that it causes an aestheticization of science, which may contribute to an uncritical relationship with it.  The discussion of this assumption will be based on an analysis of the conditions that define this mutual contamination between science and design. This seems to reconfigure the scientific processes for its foray into the world of design, or design processes for its foray into the scientific world. On the one hand design creates representations that are intended to be descriptive of scientific knowledge seeking a translation of its complexity that is understandable by others. On the other, makes use of scientific information, of its phenomena, to create designs and conceptual representations, such as the translation into algorithms of biological formulas, which in turn generate an image. In the relationship between science and design, the visualization of scientific phenomena is no longer just a question of scale by providing visions of the invisible, because too small, or elusive, because too big and too far, is also the possibility of the representation of extreme phenomena without physical existence. Also Science, by means of these representations, has taken aesthetic features, making itself beautiful, even in the eyes of those who only see in these images abstract representations without any index with reality. We are shown colourful, attractive and mysterious images. The characteristics of these phenomena point to the loss of any referent to the natural and material world, still being, however, quite convincing of its scientific truth, and making indispensable its discussion.

"Cet ouvrage pose le premier jalon de ce que l’on pourrait appeler une phénoménologie du design, s’intéressant à la manière dont le design, dans sa capacité à créer les surfaces tactiles et visuelles du monde moderne, affecte, structure et encadre notre expérience quotidienne par la production d’effets. [...] En d’autres termes, ce qui est important dans le design, c’est sa capacité à produire des effets qui conditionnent l’expérience par la médiation d’objets potentiellement capables d’enchanter notre quotidien. Aborder la phénoménologie du design revient ainsi à s’attacher à comprendre sa relation avec les éléments constitutifs de l’expérience et la manière dont il les transforme." — M. N. Folkmann, Préface

This article discusses how designers learn about the creation of board games by familiarizing
themselves with tacit knowledge and company processes. To some extent board game design depends on
general design methodology and knowledge. However, in order to be able to work in an international board
game publishing house and to design board games (and thus facilitate play) for a multicultural audience, the
designer has to know about preferences regarding materials, production processes, visualization and
packaging. A board game is usually a product of teamwork where designers from different fields of expertise
come together to solve design challenges having to do with both form and function. Since a board game
sometimes is created from the idea to a ready made product all set for marketing inside a game publishing
house, the designer also has to understand the different stages of the product development process.
This study is conducted in the department of product development at a Scandinavian game publishing house
with professional board game designers coming from different educational backgrounds. The designers are of
different ages and in different stages of their careers. Traditional research methods such as qualitative
thematic interviews are used to demonstrate how tacit knowledge is transferred by both management and
fellow designers and how a designer becomes familiar with the company’s design philosophy. The findings
are that expertise in game design involves mastering a multitask challenge which may best be learned through
familiarizing oneself with both tacit knowledge learned in everyday work but also by analyzing feedback
coming from different sources.

Welchen Einfluss hat die Gestaltung des gegenständlichen Umfeldes auf zwischenmenschliche Beziehungen und wie werden diese gewollt oder ungewollt mit den Dingen mitgestaltet? Auf welche Weise werden durch Design und Architektur soziale Kompetenzen wie zwischenmenschliches Erkennen, Handeln und Erleben ermöglicht oder verunmöglicht?
Autor*innen verschiedener Disziplinen gehen diesen Fragen nach und eröffnen hierbei eine dingorientierte Perspektive auf das Themenfeld des Social Design, die sowohl geeignet ist, eine Brücke zwischen Theorie und Praxis zu bilden, als auch einschlägiges Studienmaterial für die sozialen Dimensionen der Gestaltung zu versammeln.

This paper explores the relation between metaphysical commitments and the evaluation of design projects. The dialectical relation of permanence and change needs to be incorporated into current design more frequently. Any project which lacks a clear metaphysical status makes the challenge to address permanence and change more difficult. Metaphysical uncertainty also results in (a) evaluations that have no clear criteria of success and (b) a shift in the language of evaluation from objective criteria towards expressions of personal taste. The paper contains some examples and a case study of new courthouses in the USA. k c

Philosophical interpretations are essential to design thinking because as an act of imagination and choice it is not dependent on objective phenomena. It is responsive to wants and needs, is goal oriented, and guided by preferences and experience. While scientific knowledge has advanced by adopting conventions to guide disclosure of empirically established information, cumulative knowledge of designing has not developed because it has had no systematic way to consider non-empirical factors. Historically, design philosophy has been presented as aesthetic, practical or personal preferences rather than as a systematic philosophical system that could be developed, tested, and refined to support understandings of design and design thinking. The intent is to show how different philosophies relate to specific modes of purposeful thought and how such correlations supports practical application of a collaborative approach to philosophy itself.

Fry's 3rd volume (following _Redirective Practice_ and _Design as Politics_) outlines an ontology of human being as 'designed animals.' This scale of thinking, recovering a stronger intentionality behind the idea of 'designing,' is necessary to confront unsustainable liberalism, such as manifests in human-centered designing.

Design is a discipline, a field, and a profession. Inherently interdisciplinary, often focused on a future that does not yet exist, the work of design involves solving problems for multiple stakeholders in a complex changing world. Designers also seek to create and to invent. Educating people for the design field today involves the legacy of the past and the challenges of the future. Comparable to medical education at the start of the 1900s or business education in the late 1950s, design education is a practical art and an emerging science that requires the full resources of the modern university at a time when the university itself faces extraordinary demands. This lecture examines questions, proposes possible answers, and considers problems that will not be easy to solve.

This thesis consists of a series of extensive projects which aim to explore a new designer role for fashion. It is a role that experiments with how fashion can be reverse engineered, hacked, tuned and shared among many participants as a form of social activism. This ...

Design des territoires, l'enseignement de la Biorégion vise un double objectif : présenter ce que la « biorégion » nous enseigne et rendre possible son enseignement par le design. Car le design n'est pas seulement ce qui a accompagné, promu et esthétisé le modèle destructeur de la modernité productiviste à toutes les échelles, mais il est aussi ce qui peut le remettre en question tout en expérimentant des voies divergentes pour changer notre relation au territoire de manière critique et située. Issu d'un programme pluriannuel de recherche de l'ÉSAD Valenciennes, ce livre consolide l'engagement pour un design écosocial en articulation avec la pensée biorégionaliste. Encore peu connue en France, cette dernière est pourtant diffusée dans le monde entier et a inspiré chercheurs, créateurs et militants pour nous apprendre à rétablir le lien au lieu et dégager des alternatives à l'urbanisation totale de la Terre. Dans une perspective pédagogique assumée, ce livre s'adresse autant aux enseignants et aux étudiants des savoirs et pratiques du territoire (design, architecture, urbanisme, géographie, etc.), qu'à toutes celles et ceux qui cherchent à mieux comprendre comment la création peut participer à la lutte contre la misère écologique et sociale contemporaine, en partant de la réalité plurielle des territoires et des manières singulières d'habiter, c'est-à-dire en cultivant le sens du lieu pour le bien commun.
Sous la direction de Ludovic Duhem (philosophe, Coordinateur de la recherche à l'ÉSAD Valenciennes) et Richard Pereira De Moura (géographe, Chargé de la recherche en design à l'ÉSAD Valenciennes - 2017-2019). Avec des contributions de Peter Berg, Alberto Magnaghi, Thierry Paquot et Mathias Rollot.

La philosophie du design que nous appelons de nos vœux peut s'entendre comme une double recherche : poïétique et esthésique. Du point de vue poïétique, c'est-à-dire du point de vue du projet en train de se faire, le geste de design se présente chez le designer comme un processus créatif singulier reposant sur une boucle de co-détermination infinie entre le savoir-penser et le savoir-modéliser, et constituant une forme propre de culture. Du point de vue esthésique, c'est-à-dire du point de vue du projet en train de se vivre, l'effet de design se présente pour l'usager comme un retentissement phénoménologique en trois dimensions : ontophanique, callimorphique, socioplastique.

The following essay sketches varieties of imagination operative in the best architectural work. It was published in Warehouse Journal, a student-edited journal produced annually by the Faculty of Architecture, University of Manitoba. Student editors for Warehouse 25 were, Alena Rieger and Ally Pereira-Edwards.

Considerable scholarly discussion has been given to the idea that we are moving toward a state of “posthumanism.” This essay examines some possible implications of a posthuman existence, specifically as it relates to that most basic of human needs—sexuality. I explore the spiritual aspects of sexuality to see what is lost and what is gained in technologically mediated forms of sexuality. To that end, I consider the interplay between sexual behavior and our conceptions of the sacred, how technologies are changing our views of—and realities concerning—our bodies, and the potential for a sacred posthuman sexuality.

I explain how to create a philosophy thesis relating to a design project. I examine a supervisory experiment of more than 220 philosophy theses. I address epistemological issues on the encounter of design and philosophy. We must teach the difference between a project question and a philosophical one. I try to define a new design research model as ‘philosophy by design’.

La presente tesis doctoral, es un esfuerzo por aportar una propuesta de hacer diseño arquitectónico ante las exigencias actuales de la complejidad. La discusión ha sido extensa en cuanto a que el diseño debe ser complejo, el problema es, que desde nuestro campo de conocimiento, no se ha dicho satisfactoriamente cómo. El objetivo inicial esperado en la investigación, consistía en la vinculación compositiva espacial entre la música y la arquitectura, trascendiendo su dimensión simbólica y sus entidades métricas; sin embargo, ante la falta de una estructura teórica adecuada al contexto del diseño, fue necesario iniciar la construcción de un argumento categórico generalizante, que integrara aspectos conceptuales abstractos, y aspectos materiales de realización física, en un lugar común (τoπoς).
Este argumento se convierte formalmente, en un modelo semántico basado en los sistemas evolutivos de memoria (Ehresmann, Vanbremeersch, 2007), que genera un patrón complejo a nivel conceptual, y que funciona como una metaestructura, en conjunción con la generación de ontologías computacionales y estructuras gráficas jerárquicas, como significantes para la representación formal del conocimiento y son elementos conformadores para la resolución de los problemas representativos de la complejidad en el contexto del diseño. Esta base de conocimiento integra herramientas
y métodos de inteligencia artificial, mediante el uso de Sistemas Clasificadores de Aprendizaje (L.C.S.)(Drugowitsch, 2008), (Urbanowicz, 2009), que basadas en el universo de  conocimiento dado, posibilitan razonamiento.

As design of interactive products started to address the whole user experience, User Experience (UX) became an established field of research. Nevertheless UX design presents some risks, such as providing users with experiences that they do not wish. Furthermore, UX methodologies lack prescriptive tools for guiding designers. This paper establishes a link between UX research and Affordance theory and postulates the concept of Experience Affordances. Affordances represent a first step toward the development of prescriptive methods and help preventing designer from imposing experiences to users. Thus, a framework for describing product experience in terms of affordances is exposed and discussed by analysing exemplary products. In concluding the paper, the implications of the framework are presented.

The philosophy of biomimicry, I argue, consists of four main areas of inquiry. The first, which has already been explored by Freya Mathews (2011), concerns the “deep” question of what Nature ultimately is. The second, third, and fourth areas correspond to the three basic principles of biomimicry as laid out by Janine Benyus (1997). “Nature as model” is the poetic principle of biomimicry, for it tells us how it is that things are to be “brought forth” (poiēsis). “Nature as measure” is the ethical principle of biomimicry, for it tells us that Nature places ethical limits or standards on what it is possible for us to accomplish. And “Nature as mentor” is the epistemological principle of biomimicry, for it affirms that Nature is the ultimate source of truth, wisdom, and freedom from error. Within this overall framework, I argue that seeing Nature as physis – understood as “self-production” or “self-placing-into-the-open” – constitutes the requisite ground for the poetic, ethical, and epistemological principles of biomimicry, and that biomimicry thus conceived involves a new philosophical paradigm, which I call “enlightened naturalism”.

Designers Make
Designers Plan Making
Designers Visually Plan Making
Designers Visually Plan Making Things
Designers Visually Plan Making Useful Things
Designers Visually Plan Making Useful Things for People
Designers Visually Plan Making Useful Things for Sets of People
Designers Visually Plan Making Useful Things for Sets of People in Situations
Designers Visually Plan Making Useful Things for Sets of People in Situations
Designers Visually Plan Making Fruitful Sets of People in Situations
Designers Visually Plan Making Fruitfully Socio-Material People-Situations
Designers World-Make

Classical theories of harmony have been used to explain phenomena like beauty, happiness, health, virtue, pleasure, peace, and even ecological sustainability. With the intent of making these theories more accessible to designers, this article reviews the conception of harmony from about 500 BCE to the present. It begins with a brief overview of harmony in classical Chinese and Greek philosophy. Then it examines the role of harmony in the renaissance, the scientific revolution, and the early modern period across topics in aesthetics, ethics, physics, politics, and economics. Finally, turning to the 20th century, this article highlights the conceptual function of harmony in psychology, neuroscience, computer science, and design. This synthesis concludes with a review of applications and implications for contemporary designers. An essential conclusion of this article is that harmony involves the integration of diversity into a greater whole; harmony is not pure agreement or "sameness." Overall, we suggest that classical principles of harmony might serve as a theoretical framework to help designers develop a more sustainable and vibrant vision of the future.

This research investigates ‘body-sites’ as a situational context for designing and encountering wearable artefacts in relation to the phenomenological body.

As a body-site, skin is a probable location for experiences and practices of dress, including adornment with wearable artefacts such as clothing, jewellery, and cosmetics. This research builds a deeper understanding of the potential for wearable artefacts to engage with corporeal and conceptual qualities of skin as a body-site, thereby opening up avenues to create alternative modes of dress.

The body-site is studied through projects that investigate the transformative qualities of skin as it shifts between lived (Leib), object (Körper), and speculative states of being. This gives rise to the conceptual framework of 'a skin that wears'. Produced out of the relationships between skin and dress, 'a skin that wears' is revealed through the projects to be a complex network of intermingling functions: skin is a sensitive and perceptive integument, a physical organ that envelops the human form, and a structure invested with personal and social meaning that can be enhanced through relationships with dress.

Over the course of the research, embodied processes including writing, drawing, and making develop as ways to identify and describe qualities of the body-site and a skin that wears. Through embodied processes, projects reveal that temporal forms of dress can emphasise small details of the body-site by drawing attention to subtle and ephemeral states of skin. It is shown that wearable artefacts can become integrated into body image, act as a medium for imagining alternative states of being, and can visually symbolise social ideas and values. This suggests that dressing skin holds the potential to transform embodied and culturally constituted experiences and understandings of the body. Furthermore, design processes refined through the projects are shown to amplify subjective awareness of the body-site. This reveals opportunities for developing wearable artefacts that could be experienced, attached, and imbued with meaning by interacting with particular qualities of skin.

This PhD forms a precedent ‘skin-based’ model for design practice. It situates the body-site as the locus of an investigation conceptualised through the layered anatomical structure of human skin. In the research this is illustrated through projects that integrate a research topology, which draws together ideas and processes from across different disciplines (such as literature and art), as well as an overlaid research topography that generates knowledge through iterative making and cumulative action.  ‘Skin-based’ inquiry becomes a way to analyse and speculate on alternative ways that skin and wearable artefacts can interact and be given meaning.

There are many ways of understanding the nature of philosophical questions. One may consider their morphology, semantics, relevance, or scope. This article introduces a different approach, based on the kind of informational resources required to answer them. The result is a definition of philosophical questions as questions whose answers are in principle open to informed, rational, and honest disagreement, ultimate but not absolute, closed under further questioning, possibly constrained by empirical and logico-mathematical resources, but requiring noetic resources to be answered. The article concludes with a discussion of some of the consequences of this definition for a conception of philosophy as the study (or “science”) of open questions, which uses conceptual design to analyse and answer them.

Semiotics (sometimes spelled “semeiotic”) is the name first given by John Locke, and later reprised by Charles S. Peirce, for the “doctrine of signs,” or the study of how some things can stand for other things to still other things. This deliberate inquiry can be contrasted with “folk semiotic” accounts, which assume that there is some intrinsic feature about, say, the human voice or a painted board that makes them capable of signifying. Such a naive assumption does not withstand serious scrutiny. From a philosophical standpoint, what makes something a sign is an involvement in a specific sort of triadic relation. This relation is found in human/nonhuman and deliberate/nondeliberate signs alike. Semiosis, the action of signs, is what permits communication, but it is wider than communication. For example, if while in an adjacent room I smell that the turkey in the oven is ready, my pet dog can smell it too, and the turkey is not trying to “tell” us anything. But if the cook in the kitchen tells me it is ready, I receive that message, while my dog hears the sounds but is none the wiser (in contemporary semiotic parlance, my dog and I couple our Umwelten via indices, but the symbols at hand generate interpretants only in my anthroposemiosis). In spite of the fact that it has a long and distinguished history (especially during the medieval period), general inquiry into signs became an organized research program only in the mid-20th century. Today, in addition to philosophers, semiotics attracts a wide range of scholars, such as ethologists, cognitive scientists, linguists, art historians, logicians, media theorists, literary critics, computer programmers, biologists, sociologists, and so on. From a methodological standpoint, then, parochialism is not an option. The scholarly literature can nevertheless be fruitfully divided into theoretical and applied strands. Not surprisingly, most philosophers drawn to semiotic questions work in the former strand. Semiotics is not to be confused with “semiology,” a (now largely defunct) project that originated in the lectures of the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and which was active in the 1960s, mainly in France. Semiotics, by contrast, is a vibrant tradition that continues to flourish worldwide. Although some persist in employing the term “semiotics” when discussing narrow studies that focus exclusively on cultural codes, such terminological misuse masks the fact that a study of signs is broader than a study of language. A sustained philosophy of signs, then, promises (as Locke initially surmised) to yield truly novel insights.

Today we appear to ourselves under new, immunological premises. We must learn to actively take responsibility for what we passively undergo. Plasticity, according to Malabou, forms the condition of the very coherence of thought and life. But is the concept of plasticity enough to learn from the brain? While it is clear that plasticity compels thought, it is not clear how thought matters in the becoming of the brain, nor how we can learn from the risks to which the brain is exposed. Drawing on Deleuze's concept of 'vis elastica' and two concepts in the recent work of Sloterdijk, 'elastic conservatism' and 'vertical tension', I supplement Malabou’s concept of plasticity with the concept of elasticity. To supplement plasticity with elasticity is to supplement the question ‘what to do?’ with the question ‘why here (and now)?’. While the former question belongs to knowledge and action, only the latter is capable of reorienting thought itself.

With this volume we present 24 contributions to the philosophy of design. Design is an emerging topic in philosophy and not yet one on which work is shaped by a common set of questions or by an academically entrenched discipline of philosophy of design. We therefore consider it an effort in itself that we can present 24 contributions. Throughout the years we have approached in our careers design from our separate disciplinary perspectives and probed whether design was becoming a more general topic of philosophical re ection. One of us (Pieter) is working in a philosophy department and analyzed design as part of a larger project within the philosophy of technology. This has led to a predecessor volume on the philosophy of design (Vermaas et al. 2008), analyses of design (Houkes and Vermaas 2010), joint work with design researchers on the structure of design (e.g., Vermaas and Dorst 2007), and to the creation of the Design Research Foundations book series, in which this volume has appeared. The second of us (Stéphane) is working in a design department and a design research center. He analyzed design from a phenomenological perspective and contributed to developing the knowledge of design in France. These efforts led to a monograph about how design affects, structures, and frames experience (Vial 2010) and to the founding of the French- speaking journal Sciences du Design edited by Stéphane. Our separate work may be taken as proof that design has found its way to philosophy, yet when teaming up we discovered a more substantial interest.

RESUMEN
- Sloterdijk –señala en Normas para el Parque Humano que “...los hombres de ser un simple rebaño conducido y guiado por pastores privilegiados, ...... Los pueblos nómadas y ganaderos se transformaron después de muchos siglos en pueblos agrícolas”. Sloterdijk intenta dilucidar a qué refiere Heidegger1 con “los pastores del ser”, ya que si bien las formulaciones pastoriles de la carta sobre el Humanismo son bien conocidas, no se ha precisado el sentido de estas figuras, antes bien han sido objeto de burlas soterradas. Aquí pues ha de buscarse el sentido la metáfora heideggeriana del hombre como 'pastor del ser'. Para – a partir de allí–  plantearse los alcances de las observaciones de Sloterdijk en torno a las distintas prácticas de pastoreo y –en particular– a la cría de ganado a gran escala con el 'capitalismo cárnico' que esto implica o, como lo anuncia Nietzsche, la lucha entre los pequeños criadores y los grandes criadores del hombre.
Adentrándose en estas formulaciones heideggerianas, Sloterdijk también interrogará por ¿quienes son los visitantes y qué significa ser vecino de esta extraña abstracción, a la cual se le denomina el Ser”?
- Sloterdijk declara ser un inmunólogo teórico, quien se ha dado a la tarea  de pensar en cómo el ser humano diseña la arquitectura de la seguridad de su existencia. ¿Cómo habita? ¿Cómo se previene de futuras crisis? ¿Cómo se defiende? ¿Cómo se integra en sus culturas, entendidas como comunidades de lucha? (Es un cambio de paradigmas: de la filosofía a una inmunología general.)
Las consecuencias de aplicación de las tecnologías génicas en la industria alimentaria, la agricultura moderna, y aún más en la industria cárnica, para nuestra dieta son fatales. La enfermedad de las vacas locas (encefalopatía espongiforme bovina (EEB) es sólo la punta del iceberg. Desde la antigüedad, la civilización occidental descansa sobre las espaldas de ganado, que fue ordeñado, sacrificado, sin piel, estirada en el yugo, y considerados dioses. En su libro, Jeremy Rifkin revela la magnitud y de las consecuencias devastadoras de la moderna manía de carne de vacuno.
Si pudiera hablarse propiamente de una era “poshistórica”, su comienzo sería indisociable de la salida de la Tierra de sus bambalinas históricas, de la pérdida de su condición de materia prima y de la adquisición de la categoría de objeto de la preocupación humana.
Sloterdijk critica la vieja idea de Heidegger sobre el enraizamiento, con el que se refiere a ese modo de entender a los seres humanos como seres cuya verdadera naturaleza es el enraizamiento en la tierra.1 Según esta idea, la única solución del hombre para una estabilidad con el medio sería la necesaria reinstauración de esa relación. Muy diferente de lo que argumentaba Ortega, según el cual es precisamente el extrañamiento en vez del enraizamiento lo que realmente definía al hombre en su relación con la naturaleza.2 Ortega defiende que somos seres “extraños” y es precisamente la “incomodidad” constante con el medio lo que nos obliga a reinventarnos y por tanto inaugurar una determinada técnica. 
Ahora bien, en lugar de enunciar la pertenencia a una época pre-sostenible, más que post-industrial, Sloterdijk deja entrever su tesis sobre la ineludible atadura que plantea cualquier “post” que nos ata definitivamente a aquello de lo cual queremos salir.3
Si pudiera hablarse propiamente de una era “poshistórica”, su comienzo sería indisociable de la salida de la Tierra de sus bambalinas históricas, de la pérdida de su condición de materia prima y de la adquisición de la categoría de objeto de la preocupación humana.
Es evidente, para Sloterdijk, que la tierra no podrá seguir soportando durante mucho tiempo lo que parecía soportar hasta ahora. Su definición de theatrum cosmopoliticum la desborda. Sus funciones históricas —campamento de base para el éxodo histórico, fuente de material de construcción y combustible, escenario y objeto de contiendas geopolíticas- no serán, en un futuro previsible, compartibles con su pervivencia. Así pues, una verdadera poshistoria empezaría eximiendo a la tierra de las funciones destructivas históricamente adquiridas.
Es necesario decir que éstos son los conceptos de la Tierra que tienen las llamadas altas culturas, cuya altura suele medirse por la magnitud de su rechazo del estado de simbiosis con la Tierra.
No es casualidad que el cosmopolitismo sea el criterio de la alta cultura que triunfa; y lo que es menos aún el que la palabra cosmopolita, ciudadano del mundo, fuera en un principio una profética ironía cínica (Diógenes) que se convertiría en algo históricamente muy serio. Ahora los llamados ciudadanos del mundo casi no viven ya en la Tierra: son habitantes del país llamado complejidad, viajeros de la clase Grande-Vitesse, presurosos huéspedes transeúntes.4
Entre las problemáticas que vienen de la mano de la sostenibilidad, aparecerían los ecosistemas, que son la verdadera urgencia que nos presenta el momento presente. Energías y ecosistemas nos permitirían ver el proyecto como dispositivo, como prototipo de intercambio de información, de organización de la vida, no solo de la vida del hombre, sino de la Vida en mayúsculas. El proyecto con este panorama alcanza niveles de lo macro, de las organizaciones estratégicas de las cosas, y a la vez de lo micro, de las múltiples realidades participantes en el sistema. Podría hablarse de muchos ejemplos proyectuales que empiezan a manejar lo micro (las bacterias o microorganismos, por ejemplo, como material del proyecto de bio-arquitectura).
De allí que no sea casual, que la lengua alemana haya reservado la palabra “Erdenbürger”, ciudadanos de la Tierra, a los recién nacidos, como para distinguir el único momento de la vida del individuo en el que se le concede un soplo de superioridad sobre el mundo histórico. Y  no  deja  de ser  significativo  que  fuera  un  astronauta,  Edgar  Mitchell  (“el sexto  hombre  en  pisar  la  luna”)  quien  dio  un  nuevo  valor  a  la palabra al describir las emociones de los que regresan del espacio: “vuelves con la sensación de no ser ciudadano de los EE.UU. sino  ciudadano  de  la  Tierra”.  Si  pudiera  hacer  realmente  una era  “poshistórica”,  su  comienzo  sería  indisociable  de  la  salida de  la  Tierra  de  sus  bambalinas  históricas,  de  la  pérdida  de  su condición de materia prima y de la adquisición de la categoría de objeto de la preocupación humana... Con ello cambian todas las premisas del drama histórico. Lo que era escenario se convierte en tema de la acción. Lo que servía de telón de fondo pasa a  primer  término.  Lo  que  se  presentaba  como  materia  prima se  trueca  en  producto.  Lo  que  era  escena  es  ahora  la  obra  en sí... Ya desde ahora puede decirse que la “historia del mundo” como  proyecto  inscrito  en  el  tiempo  para  la  ejecución  de  misiones espirituales y morales con trasfondos naturales y físicos, es una idea agotada... Para nosotros, la Tierra ha dejado de ser el infatigable y paciente “apoyo y protección” que casi todas las generaciones pasadas vieron en ella. Sólo  podrá  sobrevivir  gracias  a  un  nuevo  gesto  constructivo, realizado por los seres humanos que hayan comprendido que la protección del escenario es el argumento de la obra.
CITAR:  - Vásquez Rocca, Adolfo, “Sloterdijk: De los Pastores del ser al Capitalismo cárnico contemporáneo. Posthumanismo, inmunología general y giro antropotécnico”, Rosebud —Anno 6º— Dublin (Ireland), August 2016. https://rinabrundu.com/2016/08/06/sloterdijk-de-los-pastores-del-ser-al-capitalismo-carnico-contemporaneo/

Design thinking (DT) has been widely promoted as a powerful approach for systematically achieving innovation, particularly in the world of management. Recently, however, some critical voices from design and science & technology studies have called bullshit on DT, accusing it instead of distorting and trivialising design methods and processes to serve purely commercial goals. Through an analysis of the recent history of design research and an overview of some (philosophical) accounts on the concept of “bullshit”, this paper shows that at least some of the criticism holds. However, it argues that a truly fruitful critique of DT needs to go beyond simple derision. Ultimately, this paper suggests that perhaps we should steer away from the idea that there is a designerly way of thinking, and focus instead on showing how designers, being “doers”, create maker’s knowledge. Designers, educators, managers, and anyone interested in understanding why design goes beyond a simple methodology perhaps might be interested in this account.

Es geht darum, dass wir eine neue Unmittelbarkeit erreichen zwischen dem, was wir privat tun und wollen, und dem, was der öffentliche Raum bzw. die Gesellschaft ist und was für Ansprüche diese Gesellschaft an uns stellt. Die Trennung zwischen dem, was ich alleine bin, was ich alleine will und dem, was die Stadt für mich und für andere zu tun hat,

Modernity and a True Return to Nature 0. Point of Departure Question How are human-nature relations and the attainment of virtue through human-nature relations understood in the classical urban theory of Geddes and Mumford? How is technology and technological power seen as mediating the relationship between humans and nature?

طراحی در گسترۀ وسیعی از مصنوعات نظیر ساختمان(طراحی معماری)، شهر، مصنوعات روزمره و... رخ می نماید. در این مقاله مهمترین پرسشی که پژوهشگر به دنبال پاسخی برای آن است این است که «شاخصهای اصول طراحی سنتی ایران چه هستند؟» به گواه پژوهشگران، طراحی قدمتی به درازای انسان ابزارساز دارد. در ایران نیز طراحی دارای قدمتی بسیار است لیکن رویکرد طراحان ایران (همچون طراحان سایر فرهنگها) منحصر به فرد و متمایز است. در این پژوهش برای آنکه از نحوۀ اثر گذاری سنتهای کهن بر طراحی آگاهی حاصل شود نخست نظریاتی در حوزۀ فلسفه و علم مورد واکاوی قرار گرفته اند. این نظریات شامل (1) نظریه گیرایش مادی مالافوریس (2) نظریه دازاین هیدگر و (3) نظریۀ بینش اساطیری داریوش شایگان است. پس از اثبات وجود ارتباط میان معرفت و طرح و تعیین کیفیت آن، رویکرد طراحی ایرانی از طریق ساختار نظریۀ بینش اساطیری تعیین گردیده است. در پایان شاخصهای تعیین کنندۀ اصول طراحی سنتی ایرانی بر شمرده شده اند. روش شناسی این پژوهش تحلیلی و گردآوری داده ها در آن به روش کتابخانه ای صورت پذیرفته است.

Sustainability has been a contemporary vanguard for necessitating ethical questions in design. For some time, I have been questioning what it means to be an ethical designer and becoming increasingly troubled by persistence for a common framework for all designers to pursue the ‘right’, ‘better’, ‘more effective’ or ‘sustainable’ approach or outcome (see Akama 2012 and Lisa Norton’s reply in Design Philosophy Paper). Utilitarian ways to measure and standardize accountability, such as the Triple Bottom Line, Life Cycle Analysis, Corporate Social Responsibility, and versions of similar models, also suggests this desire for universality. My concern comes from such pervasiveness for consistency. When this dominates, it becomes an ethical monologue, creating a silent and peripheral ‘other’. Speaking from the periphery, I consider ways to practice mindfulness that foregrounds being and becoming with, instead of accounting and obligating, where sustainability means a surrendering to impermanence and inter-relatedness.

[This is a draft chapter in a 2017 edited book by Rachel B Egenhoefer, The Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Design. https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Sustainable-Design/Egenhoefer/p/book/9781138650176]