book icon

Notes by Alan Dix on "Notes on the Synthesis of Form"

See more booknotes by Alan Dix

Notes on the Synthesis of Form

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)