The Forgotten Legacy of Schön: From Materials to “Mediums” in the Design Activity

Critical Analysis

In this text, the authors argue that language of material is limiting in the context of design, because it focuses only on the substance of manipulation without considering the relationship between a material and its social context: “we need a concept that not only addresses the physical and embodied characteristics of the tangible but also could capture social properties, ethics, aesthetics, and cultural and political traits” (3). They offer the idea of medium as an alternative, describing that the word and theories related to media provide more evidence of the embodied nature of designing. These theories better capture the nature of surprise: that designers cannot full have control over a social medium, and so “the medium is therefore a milieu, with historical, social, political, physical, mechanical, and chemical characteristics that designers can partly harness but also that are going to surprise them” (13).

When designing refers to manipulating material, it implies a conversation between a designer and a substance. The back-and-forth is a central part of ideas being created and refined, and being used as frames for further framing and additional conversation. The framing is a purposeful, but emergent, process. The authors argue that this way of thinking ignores that “some materials are therefore more designable than others—not because they are physically flexible, but because they can be interpreted in multiple ways” (7). The shift towards interpretation—the need for interpretation—indicates that the substance itself is social, or can be viewed socially during designing (not simply as a result of designing). Conversations are used as an example; Schön feels that discussions are a medium of design, and if that’s true, they are fundamentally social constructs. Similarly, music is experienced as it is produced, meaning that it is “representative and expressive and valuable” (9), which are qualities of a medium.