The Epistemology and Methodology of Design and Architectural Objects

Abstract

We live in a world of constant and rapid change. Values, ideologies, beliefs,  regimes, institutions, etc.,

etc., have transformed their identity beyond recognition. Among them are objects of design and architecture. The problem I want to discuss in my paper has to do with this rapid and unprecedented changes: how do we identify and classify design and architectural artifacts vis-a-vis their new and frequently  unrecognizable appearances.

In fact the problem I point at goes back to Aristotle who was the first to note that in a world of constant growth and change, one has to ask whether there are necessary and sufficient conditions for a thing to be considered as such; is there an idea, a definition, a thing should comply with in order to be properly identified.

Aristotle’s epistemological question is still relevant today, especially in the context of design and architecture, which are constantly changing and growing. Take, for instance, a common object of design – a chair, and compare its lexical definition to its numerous real appearances in the course of its history. Or refer to the lexical definition of a building, and put it next to buildings around you. Having performed this gedankenexperiment,  i .e.: comparing the lexical definition of the relevant category to its diverse appearances in reality, is in fact an epistemic dilemma as well as a methodological query. On the one hand we have an idea of an object, i.e.: of a chair or of a building, and on the other hand chairs and buildings hardly fit nowadays to their lexical established definitions. Moreover, due to the growth and rapid developments of design and architecture, their objects and products simply do not resemble each other any more. Look at chairs designed by Eero Aarnio, Alessandro Mendini, Ron Arad, Marcel Breuer, Nana Ditzel, and the chair prototypes sketched in the Bauhaus by Erich Dieckermann – the differences among them are unbridgeable, eliciting  the question why and how do we cluster them all under the same family of objects and treat them all as chairs.

The same goes with Architecture. Buildings designed by Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe,  Philip Johnson, Le Corbusier, Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano, Bernard Tschumi, Frank Gherry,  Daniel Libeskind, and many others, who have contributed to the proliferation of the language of Architecture, and have enriched our experience of structure and design, have challenged  by the same token the merits of architecture and its foundations, expanding the notion of buildings beyond recognition. Guggenheim’s museum by Frank Gherry has ‘violated’ traditional concepts of architecture, the same goes with Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin, Renzo Piano’s Nemo in Amsterdam, and the Pompidou Center designed by Rogers and Piano. And still, they all belong to the same family of architecture in spite of the fact that each one of them hardly relates to the other, as well as to buildings in architecture at large.   

 In light of my examples, it is vital to discuss the question originally raised by Aristotle: how do we classify objects of design  and architecture, and furthermore -  which of the many instances of design and architecture is the most paradigmatic; the one we would prefer as the most representative, fully exemplifying values of design and architecture.

A partial answer to our dilemma is given by two philosophical approaches: the first is Quine’s(1) theory of natural kinds,  which rigidly bases similarity (of objects, phenomena etc.) on induction. The second  philosophical approach is Wittgenstein’s(2)  family resemblance, which treats similarity in the context of games, interpreting classification as an open texture endeavor. With these two theories in mind we can explain and eliminate some of the problems put by modern and post-modern design and architecture, and make sense of their diversity. 

Notes

1.Quine, V. W., 1969, “natural kinds”, in: Schwartz, S. P., (ed.), Naming, Necessity and Natural kinds, Ithaca, London

2.Wittgenstein, L., 1963, Philosophical Investigations, Oxford U. press