Winter School “Design for Higher Education” 25 November 2016, Michael Mehaffy

Описание: Biography:
Michael W Mehaffy, Ph.D., is a design theorist, researcher, educator, curriculum developer, and consultant in strategic urban design with an international practice based in Portland, Oregon. He has held teaching and/or research appointments at six graduate institutions in five countries, and he is on the editorial boards of two international journals of urban design. He is also on the boards of four NGOs in sustainable development and livability, including the Portland-based Sustasis Foundation, where he is Executive Director. Michael is noted for his published research and professional articles on the works of Christopher Alexander, Jane Jacobs, urban morphology, urban self-organization, architecture, computer science, and philosophy.

“The Oddly Neglected Topic of Design in Contemporary Education”
In a sense, every discipline engages the process of design: there is always, in Herbert Simon’s apt definition, a transformation “from existing states to preferred ones.” The transformation may only be the assembly of knowledge, but there are always questions of designed structure and design process. It is curious, then, that the subject of design is relegated to specialized fields like architecture, and neglected in other fields. What would a broader curriculum of design look like? What would be the benefits for other fields, including the humanities, the sciences, philosophy? We consider some of the primary sources from Aristotle to Goethe to modern complexity scientists like René Thom, and closing with the highly influential architect and design theorist Christopher Alexander.