Unintended Signals

Design is the first signal of intention.

--William McDonough


The blueprints of architects and master planners engineer more than the shape of buildings and the relationships between building, street, and open space. Through these designs, the conditions of the possibility of living are structured.  What is being mastered in these plans to build the shells of human habitation?


The conscious intention of the designer is only one small part of the signals that any given design sends to the various persons who may see it, engage it, and even live in it.


While I’ll have a tendency to report on architecture, urban planning, eco-towns, and may write more about things occurring in China than elsewhere, these entries will spread across design broadly conceived as intentional action to shape human life, across the globe.

 
25 February 2009 1:49 PM
I was struck by a sentence in the World Bank’s recent announcement of a knowledge sharing partnership with USC.

“In East and South Asia, one-third to one-half of the poor will reside in cities or towns by 2025.”
Describing the population as a proportion of a whole (the poor) without enumerating the whole (#?) makes it hard to know how many poor will be living in those foretold mega-cities, and it...
 
Not all false truths about design, green building, eco-towns (and almost anything else for that matter) come from intentional manipulation of what a person is allowed to see and not see, and is told or not told about a project. Yes, such blinding and framing of a journalist or other knowledge producer by sponsoring organizations and those who have money or prestige to lose if their golden vision...
 
09 February 2009 7:51 PM
Danielle Sacks’ feature on William McDonough continues to be distributed and amplified across the Internet, as many people who were once disciples begin to question the green messiah who may be more clay footed than they had hoped. Note the URL for the story: it seems that there may have been internal editorial debate about the title, and perhaps the side that ceded ground negotiated a more subtle...

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