Abstract:
This paper offers a speculative account of the way in which architectural design
problems are ‘solved’, and of the significant ways in which such problems are
constructed by the designers themselves. Deliberately retaining pro tem the
traditional ‘problemesolution’ language frame, the paper questions this
viewpoint by positing a distinction between two categories of problem: the
‘problem as given’ and the ‘problem as design goal’. While the first represents
a conventional understanding of the problem presented for solution, the paper
speculates that this is not the problem that the designer seeks to solve. A second
category is therefore introduced to delineate the problem that is actually
solved. This problem, termed the ‘problem as design goal’, is created by the
imposition on to the ‘problem as given’ of a range of designer preferences,
expectations and prejudices which not only define the ‘actual’ problem but, at the
same time, establish the means and requirements for its acceptable solution.
Such ‘problematization’, different for each designer and for each project, is
posited as being central to architectural design, informing and constraining both
the design activity and the final outcome in ways that are not determined by the
brief itself.
