Media, Communication and the Problem of Everyday Design in Construction

• In Event: Design, Materiality and the Making of Communication Histories and Futures

Abstract

Relying on eight years of observations of building architects, engineers, and construction planners we argue that media and communication are key for understanding design practices at work. We present a model of the relationship among documents, organizational knowledge and design collaboration. Here we extend boundary object (Star & Griesemer, 1989) theory by theorizing roles for materiality in team communication and organization communication practices in design representation. The design teams we observed co-created innovative solutions relying on representations that were both mutable and strategically vague—at times open to others’ imagination and other times closed to interpretation. The problem of design for these teams then is how to structure group communication in generative ways open to interpretation while creating less mutable documents that can communicate group decisions and plans. Digital tools, thus, change the not only the medium design teams use to communicate but also the timelines for their interpretation.

Authors

• Gina Neff, U of Oxford

• Carrie Sturts Dossick, U of Washington