Post-Rationality: Value Shifts and Technical Persistences in North American Design Theory

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Abstract

What happened to technical languages brewed within North American academia’s post-war flirtation with calculative rationality? How do certain techniques persist and adapt to sparring intellectual agendas? How does technical continuity under ostensibly antithetical epistemo-cultural narratives becomes a vehicle for these narratives' critical analysis? This paper grapples with these questions through the study of a professed shift of values among researchers working on algorithmic renditions of design processes in North American research universities during the 1960s. Clustered under the umbrella of “design theories and methods,” these efforts initially portrayed algorithmic design processes and their computer implementations as correctives to subjective preferences, intuitions, and empirical methods vexing the design professions. Rule-based logico-mathematical operations would establish the professional designers’ authority in a world of overwhelming social and technological complexity. The end of the 1960s found several influential advocates of "rationality" declaring a change of heart and repurposing their technical repertoire to serve competing narratives of de-professionalization and design democratization. This paper examines dimensions of this shift through entries of the Design Methods Group (DMG) Newsletter, a monthly informal periodical disseminating ongoing research on design methods from 1966-71. It focuses specifically on algorithmic techniques for automatic floor plan generation and design problem decomposition, their development, reception, dissemination, and critiques within the DMG community, and their transposition from narratives of salvaging design professionalism to counter-narratives of annihilating it. The paper historically contextualizes these techniques' repurposing within changing intellectual and funding landscapes in North American academia while framing a broader methodological discussion on the rhetorical affordances of algorithmic techniques.

Author

• Theodora Vardouli, Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture, McGill University