Rüdiger Lutz:

Taming the dragon - part four - Metalogue

The four pillars of systems design by serendipities.

1. Soft-Systems-Design is a priori non-political. That doesn't mean, that it will not have political consequences, but first it is free of dualistic positions and evaluaion-schemes of us-and-them perceptions. The polyocular viewpoints of dynamic para-digm-shifts are preferred. Segmentation is only temporarily useful as experimental phase in model-building for getting into the mood of different situations. When the hindrances to changes are explicated, segmented thinking is obsolete and can be transcended.

2. Soft-Systems-Design is not specialized. "Specialization is for insects" said the holo-designer Robert Buckminster Fuller and meant it, when he pursued his seren-dipity-trail of dymaxions and synergistics. Complex problems have to be ap-proached with integrated and multi-dimensional morphogenetics.

3. Soft-Systems-Design draws the invisible landscape. Explication of abstract phe-nomena into readable roadmaps are needed, be it social, cultural or economical. Power, money, nature and technology have a face, not just a name. The "image of the city", that Kevin Lynch articulated is a mile-stone of this "pattern language" (Chr. Alexander) for structuring the stepping stones into the unknown and yet not programmed futures.

4. Soft-Systems-Design is not cynical. Professional elites often produce (arte)facts out of pure arrogance and ignorance in "safe" distance from the governing reality. The real agent of change is optimistic about the effectiveness of intervening inter-ference patterns and implicate orders of integrated thinking.

And, listen Designer: Are you part of the problem or part of the solution? Don't forget: Aesthetics is the radiance of hope!

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- This page is part of "Annettes Philosophenstübchen" 2005/06 - http://www.thur.de/philo/gast/ruediger/lutz27.htm -