against Herb Greene's Prairie Houses and define weight-to-cost ratio in a Bucky Fuller dome, but we have done little or no basic research
assessing in what kind of a structure the human organism lives, works, interacts optimally. There is not enough know- ledge regarding some
of the most fundamental aspects of architecture.
In other ways, architecture can hardly still be considered an area of its own (it lacks definition), and, finally, it overlaps with dozens of
different fields. In view of all this, what is architecture ? Could this be the reason why so many architects have moved to- wards city planning
and industrial design during the last decade ? And during that same time, industrial designers have concerned themselves increasingly with
the development of prefabricated houses and building components. Interior designers have developed furniture, tools, and are currently caught
up in the fad of 'Super Graphics' while visual designers develop products and make films.
There is a sort of Brownian motion going on throughout all the separate areas of design, and I believe this to be an intuitive response to
dynamically changing times, similar to the intuitive dissatisfaction and unrest of students. Surely it would be more rational to say that within
the field of integrated design, many different levels of complexity exist. These might concern them- selves with the relationship of human and
structural factors in a material (or a set of materials) that provides shelter or with the interaction between a transportation device, a road
network, and the landscape.
If we speak of integrated design, of design-as-a-whole, of unity, we need designers able to deal with the design process comprehensively.
Lamentably, students so equipped are not yet turned out by any school. For their education will be less specialised and take on to itself many
new disciplines now thought of as only distantly related to design, if related at all.
Integrated design is not a set of skills, techniques, or mechanical processes, but should be thought of as a series of biological functions
occurring simultaneously rather than in a linear sequence. These simultaneous 'events' can be thought of as initial fertilisation, developmental
growth, production (or mimesis), and evaluation, the latter leading to re-initiation or regeneration or both, thus forming a closed feedback
loop. Integrated design (a general unified design system) demands that, through careful analysis, we establish at what level of complexity the
problem belongs. Are we, for instance, dealing with a tool that must be redesigned, or are we dealing with a manufacturing method in which
up to now this tool has been used, or should we rethink the product itself in relation to its ultimate purpose ? Answers to questions like these
do not yield to 'seat-of- the-pants' examination.
A second area of investigation (unavoidably entwined with the previous one) is the historical perspective of the problem. All that we design is
an extension of the human being (usually from generalisation to specialisation). While a high-fidelity system, for instance, may be loaded
with associational values and carry a great deal of status, basically it is an extension of the human ear. As we have seen in our six-sided
function complex (Chapter One) all design must fill a human need. The history of man's emphasising or de-emphasising particular needs and
how they have been met is vital to the understanding and initiation of new pro- ducts or systems serving these needs. Furthermore, such needs
will he re-examined and regrouped with other needs or systems as the culture changes. Thus when the human, historical co- ordinates of an
idea are found, certain principles can be applied to find out what particular phase of the idea we are dealing with.