Design Representation

david-smith · 06-02-2012, 01:30 PM

Preface
In April 1999, the undersigned co-chaired a meeting entitled “The 4th
International Design Thinking Research Symposium,” or DTRS ’99, at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The theme of the symposium
was Design Representation. The present book has its roots in that event.
We have been interested in design representation for a long time, in ways
both similar and complementary. We have for years written and taught
courses that explored design representation, although we used other terms to
describe what we were looking at. We learned that other people, in various
design and design research domains, were showing increasing interest in
questions pertaining to representation. Therefore, we chose this theme as the
topic of the 4th Design Thinking Research Symposium when our good fortune
destined us to organize and chair it. The journey we have undertaken, starting
with the inception of the idea for the symposium, came to a conclusion
only once these pages were assembled. It was a true intellectual adventure
that we enjoyed tremendously, as it gave us an opportunity to learn more,
to ask many questions, and to create a fruitful dialogue with contributors to
this book. Although all the authors attended the DTRS meeting, and most of
the chapters in this book build on presentations made there, the book is
in no way a replication of the meeting’s proceedings.1 Nor does it resemble
two special issues of professional journals, guest-edited by us, that feature
DTRS’99 papers.2
Deciding on the precise focus, the structure and the layout of this book
was no easy task, even after many months of dealing with the topic. We
approached the job of editing this book like a design job and we allowed the
material to talk back to us. Our deepest appreciation is herewith extended to
the authors who shared their thinking with us, who responded to our questions,
who made fine suggestions, and who were very patient with us. We are
likewise extremely obliged to the entire Design Thinking Research community,
whose many members so enthusiastically responded to the idea of
holding the meeting in 1999. We believe that the clear voices of approval that
have come out of this community made it possible for us to target Design
Representation as the focal point of our work. We are indebted to the
Department of Architecture at MIT for the support – both intellectual and
material – that it has provided to the DTRS meeting and its preparation.
Major support from Autodesk, Inc., auto•des•sys, Inc., and the MicrosoftCorporation helped make for a richer event. A considerable number of MIT
students and employees worked hard to make it a successful experience.
Without the help of all of them, we would not have had the base that paved
the way for this book. Infinite gratitude goes to the Graham Foundation for
Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, whose generous grant enabled us to bridge
the geographic distance that separates us and to collaborate on our project
in ways that would have not been possible otherwise. Finally, we are most
grateful to Pamela Siska for considerably uplifting the language and form of
our texts, and to Francesca Warren, our editor at Springer Verlag, whose
enthusiasm and faith in this endeavour were decisive in bringing it to fruition.
Gabriela Goldschmidt, Haifa
William L. Porter, Cambridge, Massachusetts

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**shadabg** · 07-31-2012, 06:00 AM

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