Notes
- p.1 (facing)
lovely Phaedrus quote
- p.2
reminds me of design rationale
- p.4
the designer standing alone in history
- p.6
"how to represent a design problem"
- p.8
ease of critique of formal structure
- p.10
"By leaning on correctness, it was possible to alleviate the burden of decision."
- p.8-11
explicit process & "loss of innocence"
- p.15
design fit of form & context
- p.17
pushing the context & reframing the problem - strength and also slippery slope!
- p.22
the "wrongness" points of bad fit that stand out
- p.23
seeing incongruities c.f. critical transitions
- p.24
process of good fit = neutralising incongruities
- p.27
design as binary variables!!!
- p.28
"Fuller's geodesic domes have solved the weight problem of spanning space, but you can hardly put doors in them"
- p.32
unselfconscious vs self-conscious culture
- p.35
imitation vs. instruction
- p.48
ref to persistence - Welsh roof crucks
- but maybe other works embody local variation,
- maybe more variation when local,
craftsmen took over from self build?- p.50
directness - failure & reaction are one
- p.50
seems to suggest only equilibrium is good fit. ?local minima?
- p.51/52
tradition is viscosity damping adaptive change, preventing violent feedback
- p.52
argues that trade. allows sub-system corrections but unstable global adaptation? if so, what about for machine learning?
- p.53
Slovakian shawl makers "spoiled" by new dyes - ? also in 'The Craftsman'?
- p.57
Samoan carpenters as artists & inventors
- p.61
large number of issues for design => too many for memory => shorthand (re-encode) {externalisation}
- p.65-69
argument that linguistic concepts do not match particular design problem's subsystems
- p.70
language & concepts themselves a positive feedback process
- p.79
self-conscious design works (Alexander says) by selection amongst alternatives (but economics certainly not simple!!) {externalisation}
- p.74-75
advocating finding subsystems - computational thinking
- p.76
higher order thinking about mental pictures
- p.78
set theory!!
- p.86
form diagram (physical structure) vs. requirement diagram (prop & constraint)
- p.88
diagrams that do both!
- p.91
design as hypothesis -- probing the context
- p.96
form has properties, context defines fit
- p.99
design is not optimisation, but satisficing
- p.104
just like a diagram I would have drawn!! interesting focus on binary variables - is misfit always absolute?
- p.109
"data of scientific method … regularities. We put structure into them only by inference and interpretation.
- p.109
because of interpretation the links/interdependencies between variables part of designer's expertise
- p.110
given requirements and links already in designer's mind, how can the process help? because it adds structure says Alexander … and I add externalisation.
- p.113
making variables "equal in scope" - probabilities similar
- p.114
and re-representing them to make them independent
- p.117
the natural structure of a problem, its "knots & crevices"
- p.117/118
2 oranges vs. 1.5 & 0.5 oranges - eye normally picks out the 'right' structure in ordinary situations
- p.121/122
intractable interconnections identify physical aspects of problem
- p.131
component as unit (in its environment) and pattern (for its subcomponents)
