The Logic of the Design Problem: A Dialectical Approach

Critical Analysis

In this text, the author proposes a way of thinking about design problems: viewing a problematic scenario as an analytical unit that is in a state of dialectic, containing a problem, a meaningful negation of the problem, and a synthesized resolution. This is juxtaposed to other ways of thinking about design problems (such as viewing them as positivist challenges, or requiring abductive leaps, or holding wickedness, or being a series of moves and reframing). This way of viewing design situations emphasizes a cognitive approach of “thinking through” (12) as a means of finding resolution.

A dialectic is viewed as a set of moments within a whole; the whole is constructed of a thesis and an antithesis existing and emerging simultaneously. The author offers an example of “being”, which as a dialectic must be understood as a part of a larger whole that includes “nothingness” (as well as “not-nothingness”). The connectiveness, or resolution, between these qualities is described as being a speculative form of synthesis. Synthesis is a cognitive activity with no external content added: the concept contains the moments, and this is a “movement of dialectic” (10).

A design problem is constructed as a reaction to a design scenario that has been reduced in its complexity to something “thinkable” (10). This construction is a move that brings to life the dialectic, almost as a container of the problem. The designer attributes content to the problem, and simultaneously attributes the negation of the content in the solution. The more the problem is articulated, the more negation-like attributes exist to determine the solution. But these are moments of the same concept, not steps in a process, and “the work of determining the problem is actually a process of separating the problem and the solution by becoming conscious of the contradiction” (11). The negation of the problem, which is the antithesis (or solution), is not separate from the concept. Synthesis is a cognitive resolution where the “opposition between thesis and antithesis is sublated” (12) [negate, deny, contradict]. Synthesis, the author explains, “represents a simple change in perspective” (12).

A designers role is in approaching, reading, and understanding the situation (or container of thesis and inevitable negating antithesis). It is a speculative position that requires thinking of the problem and solution as one concept. It is a reading of a situation, which “require the reader to think through the contradictions of problem and solution in its dialectical-speculative fullness” (15). Understanding the situation as a dialectic is to understand it as an invitation for intellectual engagement, not for intellectual resolution. The author summarizes the position as: “The designer’s labor consisted in taking this content in its speculative, contradictory form and reconfiguring it into its ratiocinative form by constructing a means by which to understand it: this is the cognitive work of design” (16).