Abreu
andthe
Venezuelan
Youth
Orchestras
—
Design
Unbound
Design
Unbound
Design
Ann Pendleton-Jullian
John Seely Brown
Design Unbound
1 |2
Abreu
andthe
Venezuelan
Youth
Orchestras
—
Design
Unbound
Design
Unbound
Design
7 Preface
1
13 Abreu and the Venezuelan Youth Orchestras
18 Four Circles of Influence
28 A Structure of Adaptation
34 A System of Action,Ecosystemic in Nature
41 Endnotes
2
43 Design Unbound
44 A Visionary Pursuit: Optimistic and Opportunistic
48 The Intention of This Book
50 A Cambrian Moment and Our Whitewater World:
A Moment of Rapid Change,Intense Diversification,
and Evolution
54 Why This? Why Now? The (TIM)N
Framework
60 Seeing the World Anew: A Third Window
68 Three Ecologies
78 Design Unbound and Designing for Emergence
84 A New Tool Set
96 The Pragmatic Imagination
100 Endnotes
109 Acknowledgments
Preface
7
In the first half of 2010:the tallest man-made structure
opened in Dubai;an 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile set off
a tsunami over the Pacific that killed hundreds;the Deepwater
Horizon oil drilling platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico
causing one of the largest oil spills in history and prompting
international debate and doubt about offshore drilling;
Standard & Poor’s downgraded Greece’s sovereign credit
to junk,triggering the decline of stock markets world-wide
and furthering a European sovereign debt crisis;Picasso’s
Nude,Green Leaves and Bust set a new record for the sale ofNude,Green Leaves and Bust set a new record for the sale ofNude,Green Leaves and Bust
an art work at $US 106.5 million;protests in Bangkok ended
in a bloody military crackdown;scientists announced they
had created a functional synthetic genome;ethnic riots in
Kyrgyzstan caused the deaths of hundreds;the first 24-hour
flight by a solar-powered plane was completed;WikiLeaks
leaked over 90,000 internal reports about the US involvement
in the war in Afghanistan;and the World Health Organization
declared the H1N1 influenza pandemic over...a sampling of
events and problems at global scale.
Summer 2010,at an information technology roundtable
discussion in Aspen Colorado,one of the participants¹ said,
“the world just came together too quickly.We have little
understanding of its true diversity.”A second participant²
followed up later with the comment,“we are forcing the past
as a solution set.But the past as a solution set is not a viable
option.We need a new tool set.”
At a moment when every action seems to dislodge stones in
precarious terrain—ecologically,politically,culturally,technologically—we
are increasingly confronted with complex
dynamic events and complex problem environments.These
are environments rather than isolated problems,and they
are socio-technological in nature at multiple scales from the
8 Abreu and the Venezuelan Youth Orchestras | Design Unbound
individual,to communities and organizations,to societies.
These problem environments are often characterized as
‘wicked’problems.
What you are holding in your hands is a booklet that begins
with a case study to set the stage for a new tool set and
practice for having agency in what we call a white water
world—one that is rapidly changing,hyperconnected and
radically contingent.One in which complicated problems
have grown up to become‘wicked’problems because of
this connectivity,speed,and contingencies that are often
elusive and shifting.
Chapter 1 tells the story of Abreu and his Venezuelan Youth
Orchestras,not to claim victory over an intractable problem
but to introduce a way to think about making tangible progress
on these kinds of problems.
Chapter 2 presents the concept and lays out the framework
of Design Unbound.Beginning with a characterization of the
white water world,we move from‘what’to‘why’and then on to
proposing a new worldview for working in and on this world.
This worldview is based in the ecological strand of complexity
science but draws from other strands as well.In addition to
providing a third window on the world (Newton and Darwin
contributing the first two),it gives us affordances in the form
of theories,concepts,frameworks,methods and tools to
create new things and make unique progress in“a world that
has just come together too quickly.”
Although seemingly conceptual and philosophical in tone,
the chapter moves pragmatically into how to use this window.
It talks about design being unbound from thingness andunbound from thingness andunbound
disciplinary boundaries:unbound from thingness so that it
9 Preface
can shift its focus from designing things,as content in the
world,to shaping contexts;and unbound from disciplinary
boundaries so that it can make progress on highly entangled
problems.This is the setup for designing for emergence as
the means for agency and impact - agency and impact on
complex problems,but also,agency more broadly in today’s
world - at all scales,from the personal to the public,and from
the local to the global.
Chapters 1 and 2 are the initiating chapters of a larger
work Design Unbound:Designing for Emergence in a White
Water World (MIT Press,2018).Design Unbound presents
a new tool set for having agency in what we call a white water
world—one that is rapidly changing,hyperconnected and
radically contingent.The tools presented are not the tools
of a coder or a carpenter but tools that are directly associated
with a new kind of practice that is the offspring of complexity
science and architecture.Complexity science gives us
a new lens through which to view the world as one that is
entangled and emerging.It gives us new concepts and tools.
Architecture has always been about designing contexts in
which things happen.
Design Unbound is a system of nineteen chapters that present
a set of ten tools and three metatools for this new practice
of design—for working in today’s complex systems environments
and on today’s complex systems problems.These tools
begin in architecture and then expand by drawing from a vast
array of domains:from architecture,science and technology,
philosophy,cinema,music,literature and poetry,the military,
even.Design Unbound aims to blend a polymathic reservoirDesign Unbound aims to blend a polymathic reservoirDesign Unbound
of thought seamlessly with real life examples of successful
10
1 Tim El-Hady,Director of the Middle
East Leadership Initiative of Aspen
Institute’s Global Leadership Network.
2 John Rendon,founder and head
of the Rendon Group,a global strategic
engagement consultancy,who has
served as senior communications
consultant to the White House and
Department of Defense,as well as
many other political,diplomatic and
crisis teams.
design and action,but we do not expect all readers to be
polymaths.So,from architects to people involved re-conceiving
higher education to the public policy or defense and
intelligence communities,each audience will find different
tools most relevant,and different chapters will resonate with
different reading audiences.
The chapters are loosely organized in five themes;each
theme begins with a chapter that wrestles with the underlying
‘why’of the theme and then includes a set of tools.These two
chapters,“Abreu and the Venezuelan Youth Orchestra”and
“Design Unbound”do not belong to a theme,per se,as they
are the launching platform for the larger work.
Abreu and the Venezuelan Youth Orchestras | Design Unbound
11 Preface
tool 1
tool 2
tool 3
tool 4
tool 5
Starting in Architectural Design
Rapid Iteration in a Problem
Solving Space
The Expanded Brief
The Role of Critique
Orchestrating Ambiguity
Skills Matter
C3
C4
C5
C6
C7
C8
Intervals of Possibility
The Pragmatic Imagination
A New Terrain
C18
C19
epil
tool 9
Networks of Intimacies
Understanding Networks
The Change Triangle 3.0
C15
C16
C17
tool 8
meta-tool 3
An Ontological Shift
World Building
Systems of Action
C12
C13
C14
tool 7
meta-tool 2
Working in and on the World
Understanding Emergence
Designing for Emergence
C9
C10
C11
tool 6
meta-tool 1
Theme 4:
Ecologies of Influence
Theme 5:
Intervals of Possibility
Theme 1:
We Start in Architecture
Abreu and the Venezuelan
Youth Orchestras
Design Unbound
C1
C2
Launching Platform
Theme 2:
Designing for Emergence
Theme 3:
Ecologies of Action
C3C2C1 C4 C5 C6 C7 C8
C10
C11
C9
epil
C12
C15
C13
C14
C16
C18
C19
C17
Map of Chapters
= entry points= entry points
Design Unbound
1
Abreu
andthe
Venezuelan
Youth
Orchestras
14 Abreu and the Venezuelan Youth Orchestras
In one of the roughest neighborhoods of Caracas,thirty-seven
small children between the ages of five and seven sit in
metal folding chairs arranged in orchestra formation.They
are poised to play what look to be conventional instruments.
From the edge of the room,the only peculiarity seems to be
the small size of the musicians,whose feet do not easily reach
the ground.But upon closer examination,one sees that the
instruments are actually made of board,paper,paint,and
string.True to life in their size,mass,proportion,and technical
detail,they are easily mistaken for real instruments.
They are painted to look like real instruments.They have
strings that need to be replaced when they break.They have
pegs for tuning the strings.And they have all the correct grips
and fingering positions.The children hold them correctly,
proudly,and with care,as if they were real instruments.
With their orchestra leader’s keen voice as a guide,the
children begin to sing about the notes,tones,and rhythms
that their various instruments make.Their voices are the
music that brings the silent instruments to life.They are the
orchestra.It is easy to forget that the instruments are made of
paper,as the conductor occasionally breaks into the music to
correct the silent bowing of a student.
The idea of the paper orchestra,as it is called,is to engage the
children within the social and musical space of an orchestra.
Sitting together with their simulated instruments,they learn
discipline and they learn the value of playing in a group.When
they are ready to move on to real instruments,they have
already learned a tremendous amount about how to play in an
orchestra and what it means to do so.Between sessions,one
small child already voices concern that the percussions are
too disorganized.Although the paper orchestra was originally
15
an inspired,make-do solution to the problem of a lack of real
instruments,it is now the critical first stage in the Venezuelan
youth musical program called El Sistema.
The charismatic Venezuelan economist and musician José
Antonio Abreu founded El Sistema in 1975.El Sistema—the
System—is a youth orchestra and choir system that has
transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of lower- and
middle-income Venezuelan youth.From a simple beginning to
teach his love of music to a group of children,it has become a
program of social rescue and cultural transformation for some
of the most vulnerable sectors of the population.
José Antonio Abreu grew up with music.Encouraged to excel
as a musician by his own family and community,he wanted
all Venezuelan children to have the same opportunity.Today,
over forty years since its first rehearsal with eleven children,
Abreu’s program now reaches over 400,000 youth at risk.
Eighty percent of these children are from underprivileged and
marginalized areas where daily life is difficult,and violence
is pervasive.There are now close to three hundred centers
in Venezuela that provide an alternative environment to the
dangers of the streets.His aspirations high,Abreu wants to
reach one million students in the next ten years.
El Sistema is a program for social change through the power
of music.But more than just promoting music to teach
discipline and foster emotional transformation,Abreu has
created a structure that also aspires to excellence.Pathways
to excellence are fueled by ambition,and this is the most
productive force of change.
16 Abreu and the Venezuelan Youth Orchestras
“On a purely social level we save them from poverty,but what
we achieve is high quality music.They are feeling the music,
living the music.”¹
Abreu’s insistence on excellence has produced musicians
who have gone on to become major musicians in some
of the greatest orchestras of the world.Among these exceptional
musicians is Gustavo Dudamel,who has conducted
four principal orchestras,including the Los Angeles
Philharmonic.These musicians are role models.Their
stories are narratives of change that inspire new pathways
of aspiration and excellence.
El Sistema couples the efficacy of incremental achievement
with increasing levels of challenge,to sustain ambition.
From the paper orchestra,the children move into fully
instrumented orchestras and choirs.The children audition,
but they do so principally for placement;no child is
excluded.All children are given the opportunity to participate
and to perform in one form or another.This no-exclusion
policy is very important for driving the social change of
the program.
For those who are motivated,dedicated,and talented,there
is the opportunity to join the elite performing orchestras and
choirs.Auditions are held every few months,and the musicians
persevere month after month to win a coveted spot.
Many children dream of entering one of these orchestras or
choirs from the moment they enter the program.The different
orchestral levels generate ambition and competition.They
create a pull that motivates the students to work harder to
continually enter a world of greater achievement.Many traditional
elite youth orchestras only offer auditions once or twice
a year,but the frequent opportunities to audition provided
17
by El Sistema means that the young musicians are motivated
to try again and again,conquering failure through the strong
encouragement to persist.
18 Abreu and the Venezuelan Youth Orchestras
FourCirclesofInfluence
19 Four Circles of Influence
Music has to be recognized as an…agent of social
development in the highest sense,because it transmits
the highest values—solidarity,harmony,mutual compassion.And
it has the ability to unite an entire community
as well as to express sublime feelings.
—José Antonio Abreu²
“Even though we live in a dangerous neighborhood with a
lot of crime,they’ve given us an education! A lot of people
say:‘He comes from a barrio and he’s had no education.’
We’re learning to play the trumpet so that we and our families
can keep improving our lives.We’re taking big steps,like
elephants!”³
Each child has a story and Abreu cherishes them all.But as
significant as these individual stories of transformation
are,it is the multiple scales of cultural transformation that
have generated the most impact.Abreu articulates these as
circles of influence—influence at the scale of the individual
students,their families,their communities,and ultimately,
nationally and internationally.
At the scale of the individual, it is clear what the program
has given to each of these children.It can be seen in their
faces.In addition to providing a safe haven from the streets,
El Sistema cultivates self-esteem,confidence,and facilitates
a process of identity construction.The discipline and
organizational skills the children develop make them better
students,and by teaching others,they learn leadership skills.
The developing sense of commitment,responsibility,generosity,and
dedication to the orchestra forms a group dynamic
of enormous value.
20 Abreu and the Venezuelan Youth Orchestras
Youth music programs throughout the world have demonstrated
that discipline and a goal-oriented focus on perfection
are valuable in supporting the development of the individual
child.But because this is a program to build not just musicians,but
orchestras,each musician comes to understand that
his or her unique role contributes to the greater ensemble.
Music,by its nature,generates social groups.Within the
orchestra and choir,the individual learns to listen and respond
to the surrounding musical context,creating a very powerful
social space.Self-correcting until they find the harmonies and
rhythms that form a musical collective,each musician learns
to participate in an interdependency of purpose.In many
ways,it is the harmony of differences that makes music so
powerful.When different instruments and musicians find their
musical integration,the tones and rhythms literally resonate.
But beyond enhancing the child’s social development through
playing together,the music also plays a major role in shaping
their personalities.“It helps them develop their emotional
awareness—the aesthetic potential that all children and
young people possess.This will enable us to open up new
horizons for them.…Children who are materially poor gain
spiritual wealth through music,and once music has brought
them such riches,their minds,souls and spirits can carry them
onward and upward.”⁴
Discipline,self-esteem,confidence,identity construction,
social intelligence,and emotional awareness,are all powerful
developmental skills that the individual musician acquires
within the musical ecology of Abreu’s program.
At the scale of the family,El Sistema has also had significant
impact.It may be the child’s decision to pick up an instrument
21 Four Circles of Influence
and join,but to become a musician capable of playing in
an orchestra,a lot of support is required of the family.The
parents must believe in what their children are doing,and
support them both logistically and emotionally by taking them
to and from the center,washing their uniforms,and attending
concerts,even when the instruments are only made of paper.
Abreu talks about how the families are their most significant
partners because the centers are providing the children
with an alternative to the dangers of the streets:“For parents
it acted as a barrier,a very important preventative measure.…
[Therefore],when we set up an orchestra in one of these
barrios and enable the children to spend their free time
doing something useful and noble,their families become our
first allies.”⁵
But the orchestras become significantly more than just a
good alternative to the streets.As they are transformed by
their participation,the children become role models for their
entire families.Feeling valued and supported,the children
then go on to seek other ways to improve themselves and
their families.They develop new dreams,goals,and behaviors
that launch an ascending social path of consequence.
At the scale of the community,it is clear that the students’
dedication and focus are key deterrents to prostitution,
violence,and other destructive behaviors that degrade the life
of the community,as well as the life of the child.This is very
important.
But in addition,El Sistema was founded on the principle of
being open and available to all,regardless of position,class,
ethnicity,or economic status.Social inclusion at all levels
brings the whole community together,and makes it stronger.
22 Abreu and the Venezuelan Youth Orchestras
Families congregate and mix at the concerts,and communication
is amplified around the emotional equity they all have
found in their children’s music.
Furthermore,according to Abreu,the orchestras and choirs
become“creative spaces of culture and new sources of
exchange and meaning.The spontaneity of the music makes
it more than a luxury.It makes it a patrimony of society.
From the moment a child begins to play an instrument,he
is no longer poor.He becomes a child heading on an ascending
path toward becoming a full citizen.…This is no longer
putting society at the service of art,and much less at the
service of the elites,but instead art at the service of society,
the most vulnerable,the most poor.”⁶ Believing that art in
Latin America should not be a monopoly of the elites,but
a social right for all people,and that the orchestras and
choruses are more than artistic structures—they are models
and schools of social life—Abreu set out to create a different
kind of teaching system.
The result is a system that has transformed Venezuela into
a very distinctive musical force in the world.Individual
musicians have gone on to take very prestigious positions
internationally,and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra is now
world-renowned.At the scale of the world,El Sistema has had
a strong and unique impact.
23 Four Circles of Influence
A group of preschool pupils.
A group of preschool pupils waiting to be picked up.
24 Abreu and the Venezuelan Youth Orchestras
Cardboard instrument orchestra practice.
Cardboard violins.
25 Four Circles of Influence
El Sistema orchestra practice.
El Sistema orchestra practice.
26 Abreu and the Venezuelan Youth Orchestras
Student in Sarría,a slum of Caracas runs home from school.
Student in an advanced class practice in the Sarría“nucleo.”
27 Four Circles of Influence
Jose Antonio Abreu speaks to young El Sistema musicians in Caracas.
Gustavo Dudamel rehearses the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra at the Royal
Festival Hall in central London in 2009.
28 Abreu and the Venezuelan Youth Orchestras
AStructureof
Adaptation
29 A Structure of Adaptation
The idea of social inclusion at all levels through music is
Abreu’s very big idea.“To my mind,our social problems all
stem from a sense of exclusion.If you look at the world,
you see that exclusion in some form or other is to blame for
the explosion of social problems everywhere.So we have
to fight to bring as many people as we can,everyone,if
possible,into our world of music,the world of the orchestra,
of singing,of art.”⁷
To achieve this inclusion the system had to find a way to
respond to the different needs of each community from
the beginning.Environments of risk vary tremendously with
nuances of class and ethnicity.Abreu understood this challenge
intimately,and he and his directors have developed
a highly flexible management style that adapts itself to
the particular characteristics of each community and region.
“The idea of El Sistema must in no way be understood
as something static.It is more of a structure in perpetual
transformation and change,and a structure of adaptation
according to circumstances—beautifully evolving into the
modern world.”⁸
Two examples of powerful adaptations of El Sistema are
worth noting.
The first is Nucleo San Vincente, where Abreu takes the hope
and language of music to the garbage dumps of Maracay—
to the children and families who live in the poorest parts
of Venezuela.The town of San Vincente is built around the
landfill site that receives all the rubbish from Maracay.The
children spend their days digging through the garbage in
search of things to sell back on the streets.Living conditions
are at their most basic.
30 Abreu and the Venezuelan Youth Orchestras
Abreu’s group established the Nucleo San Vincente with the
intention of bringing the orchestra,instruments,teaching,
and administrative staff,to the poorest areas,just as they had
in other barrios.But they quickly discovered that they had
to approach their work differently here.
“Here,you have to adapt to each child individually.It’s not
like working in another centre where there’s a specific social
level.Here,each child has his or her own story and you have to
concentrate on that.These are children with many problems:
emotional,psychological,all sorts of problems.So,what we’re
doing is a kind of social work.By giving them the language of
music,we open up a whole new world to them.”⁹
There is significantly less social order in San Vincente than
in other towns and barrios.One cannot assume a specific
social level or family structure.Every child’s story is layered
with emotional and psychological problems.These are stories
El Sistema nucleo in a village.
31 A Structure of Adaptation
of constant struggle.So in addition to teaching music,they
provide social support as well.But,it is still the music that has
the power and efficacy to improve the emotional lives of the
children.Because of its capacity to reach into the emotional
depths of a child’s personality,while also being fun to learn,
the music becomes a language that opens up communication
between the children and Abreu’s team,and among the
children themselves.
Nucleo Barquisimeto,the second example,is a unique school
for children who are cognitively or visually impaired,have
hearing or motor problems,autism,or learning disabilities.To
work with these children,significant adjustments were made
to the instruments and the teaching methods.It has become
an extremely successful program,teaching and placing over
1,500 children in orchestras throughout Venezuela.These
children are being integrated into society through their participation
in the orchestras,and the best part is,when they reach
a certain level of integration,they are able to become valuable
members of the labor market as well.Providing meaningful
pathways for each child to find a place of value in their own
community,through the youth orchestras,is one spectacular
success of this program.
In this nucleo,the greatest challenge was how to adapt to
the needs of students with significant hearing impairments.
Conventional logic suggests that one needs to hear to make
music.Many community members believed that the school
director’s goal to have deaf children in the orchestras was
overly ambitious,and even bordered on crazy. “It was hard
work but fascinating.We had to find a way to bridge the gap
between the accepted norm and our desire to give the deaf
children the chance to enjoy music too.”¹⁰ Strong instincts,
deep knowledge of their students,and necessity led the
32 Abreu and the Venezuelan Youth Orchestras
school’s director and chorus master to invent the White Hands
Choir,which now performs throughout the world.
At the beginning of each performance,close to fifty children,
arranged as one cohesive block of the choir,pull on white
gloves in perfect unison,and wait,poised in anticipation with
their instruments—their hands in white gloves—by their sides.
The other half of the choir begins to sing,and led by their own
chorus master,the white-gloved hands of the deaf students
sign the words in rhythm with the singing.It is not really clear
who is accompanying whom as the hands move through
the air in perfect time with the music,as if the children hear
everything.The signing hands capture the music in all of its
richness—its tempo,its tonality,and expression.As over a
hundred hands move through the air,one sees as well as hears
the elegance of the choral soul translated into the music.It is
a music that is fully embodied—a music of its own kind.
The group travels throughout South America,North America,
and Europe,and has become a highly celebrated choir.The
students love that they have found a way to enjoy the music
and they love performing in public.They speak enthusiastically
and eloquently of the music they make.“I like some of
the songs we do more than others.In some of them,it’s as if
our hands were flying.That’s why I like the Ave Maria so much.
It’s very moving.”¹¹ They know what they have achieved.
33 A Structure of Adaptation
The White Hands Choir in rehearsal.
34 Abreu and the Venezuelan Youth Orchestras
ASystemofAction,
EcosystemicinNature
35 A System of Action,Ecosystemic in Nature
El Sistema is much more than a music program.It is an entire
System of Action,which has been created and implemented
by a musician-economist turned orchestra director.As a
system,it is made up of interrelated components that affect
the way people do things.These components are also interdependent.A
change to one component affects the response of
all the other components.And they are interactional,meaning
that single actions or events can reverberate throughout the
entire system.New things tried—the white gloves,for example—cause
a reaction that can be assessed and then rejected
or amplified within the system.When one thing does not give
a productive response,something else can be tried.
As a System of Action,El Sistema is about action.It is about
doing things even without knowing what the results will be.
It is about inventing things that create opportunities for new
behaviors,through participating in spaces of action that
are pervasive and build on each other.The interlocking and
interdependent components influence each other,and operate
to transform the world of these children,their families,and
communities,as an emergent phenomenon.emergent phenomenon.emergent
As a System of Action,El Sistema is transformative.It alters
both explicit behaviors and embedded habits.It is capable of
affecting not only single actions or actors,but also enabling
single actions to affect a larger social ecosystem.
A System of Action within the greater social ecosystem
affects change from the inside.From the beginning,Abreu
understood that for El Sistema to succeed,he would have
to capitalize on the unique strengths of the society in which
it would be built,and that it would have to penetrate deep
within that society.Venezuelans love music in all forms.This
was a strong force.And there was an urgent need to provide
36 Abreu and the Venezuelan Youth Orchestras
real alternatives to the“dangers and temptations”the children
faced on the streets.This urgency gave rise to the program
and is responsible for the high level of commitment,support,
and growth it sustains today.Additionally,Abreu knew that
the strong social structure of extended families and dense
communities would supply a body of support for the children
and the centers,provided the families and communities were
integrally included.
But perhaps the most effective aspect of Abreu’s approach
was his awareness that El Sistema could not succeed as the
project of a group of individuals operating alone on the edge
of society.It had to be built deep within the society,in constant
dialogue with its government,cultural institutions,and
key influential individuals.For this,Abreu put his experience
as an economist and as a politician to work.His capacity
to work with these different entities is a large factor in the
efficacy of the program.Financial and policy support,as well
The term ecosystem refers to the combined physical
and biological components of an environment,and their
interdependencies.“A mechanical system—a watch for
instance—is divisible,while an ecosystem is indivisible
because of well-developed interdependences.”¹² Social
ecosystems refer to the combined,interdependent human
and social components of an environment or community.
A social ecosystem is generally an indivisible unit within a
larger social,political,and economic environment in which
those factors of society that affect interactions among
people—including technology—function together as an
indivisible system of exchange.¹³
Because ecosystems are indivisible,they are environments
where all work feeds back into,and affects,the entire
system.Every recalibration made,as new constraints and
opportunities associated with specific local contexts
emerge,leads to learning,which then improves the efficacy,
and evolution of the entire system.
37 A System of Action,Ecosystemic in Nature
as social assistance has come from all of these partners.
Abreu’s passionate commitment and persuasiveness support
his other strengths,allowing him to create a program of such
tremendous power.
The conditions for change existed within Venezuelan society,
but it required seeing those conditions—camouflaged as they
were by the many needs and norms of the society around
them—and then providing a sympathetic and skilled set of
maneuvers to catalyze the necessary action.Abreu intimately
understood the society in which he was working and was able
to invent and implement methods that would prove effective
from deep inside that society.
Abreu’s El Sistema is a new way of thinking and doing;one
that understands ecosystems and the dynamic processes
within that often lead to change and evolution.This is different
than other kinds of orchestra programs or music schools,
where the goal is excellence,but the program is structured
and operated in a more mechanistic manner.
Many of these programs keep the music lessons relatively
distinct from performance.The elite orchestras associated
with these schools,academies,and conservatories are usually
only accessible to a small percentage of the students.Smaller
chamber groups exist,but are less performance-based,and
they are often more competitive than social.
Young musicians attend lessons and perform as a group
once,or at most,a few times a week for an hour or two.
Musical development is often an individual competitive
endeavor.Professors promote their own students,and
students seek out the well-connected professors.It is very
hierarchical and distinctly different from El Sistema,in which
38 Abreu and the Venezuelan Youth Orchestras
the school—the Center—becomes a second home.Filled withthe Center—becomes a second home.Filled withthe Center
students six days a week,it is a community in which learning
and playing music is the ethos of a greater mission.
In a program that is complex and ecosystemic in nature,
all the component parts,all the people,and all the activities
are integrated,extend broadly into the community,and are
engaged with over long periods of time.All the components
are essential.In a more traditional program,the learning
and performing parts are separate,and the program functions
differently for the various individuals involved.Most
importantly,the more traditional music programs focus on
the individual child,as opposed to the social group in which
performing is a key component of the learning and the transformation
that results.
El Sistema is a stunning story.It is radically effective in its
capacity to work at the social ecosystem level,taking on
a problem of immense proportion in Venezuelan society.
Abreu’s system was directed toward action from the very
beginning.Given this,it required a clear vision that captured
the imagination,and incited others to work for change.But,
It also required grass root efforts;people who believed,who
made the vision their own,and built the small stories that
supported the larger vision.Sometimes the smaller stories,
as actions,came first,and from these larger strategies
developed.Either way,the vision and the stories that arise
from small actions are critically interrelated.And finally,the
system also required the invention of crucial mechanisms,like
the paper orchestra or the mentorship mechanisms,which
turned vision,and strategies around that vision,into action.All
of these components are held together by the society—the
ecosystem—in which they are embedded.
39 A System of Action,Ecosystemic in Nature
As in all complex projects,one imagines that there was work
done,there were things tried,and then recalibrations were
made through a strong critical understanding of what worked,
and what did not.Abreu’s system was conceived to adapt to
different community contexts,and its ability to recalibrate
to accommodate those different contexts has been a major
contributor to its success.
The story of El Sistema has unfolded over the past forty plus
years.It has not been without its critics¹⁴ and it does not
claim to have improved the socio-political environment of
Venezuela,more broadly,but it has had an impact on one of
the most intractable urban problems of this era.By providing
pathways for children of poverty to imagine,act on,and in
many cases,achieve a better future,and be engaging their
families and communities in this ambition,it has had a positive
affect at scale.“People talk about a new energy,they say
the children have a certain spirit.But that spirit is the social
change which the music has brought to them.”¹⁵
Inspired by José Antonio Abreu’s El Sistema,and some of
the more complex problems we have intersected with in
our own work,this book began from a belief that design,as
practiced within the disciplines of architecture,where one
designs buildings as contexts for complex human interactions,
landscape architecture,where one designs deeply aware of
processes over time,and urban design,where one designs
multi-dimensional and multi-scalar systems as well as things,
might be able to aim itself at designing more than just fixed
tangible things;that the DNA of design in these domains has
untapped potential to create a new practice of design for
agency in the 21st century.
40 Abreu and the Venezuelan Youth Orchestras
By focusing on contexts not content,on entanglements
of influences not simple causalities,on dynamic not static
systems,and equipped with new methods and tools for
wrestling with entanglements and designing for emergence,
we believe this practice has the potential to affect the future
in a bold way.
41
Endnotes
1 Henry Crespo,director,El Nucleo
Maracay.From the film,El Sistema:
Music to Change Life, Paul Smaczny
and Maria Stodtmeier,2009,at 25 min
15 sec.
2 “José Abreu on kids transformed
by music,”TED 2009 talk.https://www.
ted.com/talks/jose_abreu_on_kids_
transformed_by_music.
3 A student,El Sistema,at 94 min
25 sec.
4 José Antonio Abreu,Ibid.,at 69 min
30 sec and 79 min 30 sec.
5 José Antonio Abreu,Ibid.,at 48 min
35 sec.
6 “José Abreu on kids transformed
by music,”TED 2009 talk.
7 Abreu,El Sistema,95 min 20 sec.
8 Abreu,Ibid.12 min 20 sec.
9 Adrian Ascanio,teacher at El
Nucleo San Vicente,El Sistema,76 min,
20 sec.
10 Naybeth Garcia,chorus master,
El Nucleo Barquisimeto,El Sistema.
81 min 28 sec.
11 Yowuanuska Cordero,student of
White Glove Choir,El Sistema.83 min
26 sec.
12 Sven E.Jorgensen,Felix Muller,
editors,Handbook of Ecosystem
Theories and Management. (Boca
Raton,Florida:Lewis Publishers/CRC
Press LLC,2000),p.14.
13 Central to the social ecosystem
concept is the idea that individuals
interact with each other in their
community in some manner,either
directly or indirectly,through systems
of exchange,and that these are all
contextually dependent as well.
14 One of the more critical voices of
El Sistema has been the British music
scholar,Geoffrey Baker,who disputed
many of the claims made by and about
El Sistema in 2014 in an article in The
Guardian (https://www.theguardian.
com/music/2014/nov/11/geoff-bakerel-sistema-model-of-tyranny)
and book,
El Sistema:Orchestrating Venezuela’s
Youth,(Oxford University Press,2014).
There has been a significant amount
of response to these two pieces,
denouncing Baker’s criticisms,by
both El Sistema advocates and music
education experts.It is important to
acknowledge the controversy,although
it does not negate the accomplishments
we have focused on above.
Additionally,it should be noted,
that there is now an international
consortium of El Sistema influenced
programs worldwide.See El Sistema
USA (https://elsistemausa.org/)
and El Sistema Global (http://sistema
global.org/).
15 Gustavo Dudamel,director,Simon
Bolivar Youth Orchestra,El Sistema,
31 min 20 sec.
Design Unbound
2
Design
Unbound
Design
Unbound
Design
44 Design Unbound
AVisionaryPursuit:
Optimisticand
Opportunistic
45 A Visionary Pursuit:Optimistic and Opportunistic
Design has always been a visionary pursuit and a visionary
practice—one that projects the future while remaining deeply
grounded in the past and the present.The link between
vision as a mental activity (imagining a future) and its accomplishment
in the world (the building of the imagined future)
is design.Design’s principal focus is the making of things,
whether material entities,virtually produced material entities,
or fully virtual entities.Because design’s principal enterprise
is the making of things that operate in the world—a world
unfolding—design is an agent of the future.
Design is optimistic.It brings new things into the world.
Designers take on problems,model them,frame them,and
create responses through the distribution of material,real or
virtual,in space.Designers are by nature opportunistic.They
create openings from which to make things.When there are
no clear and present problems defined,they go out and find
them embedded in the intricacy of everyday life.By problems,
we do not mean only things problematic,but also opportunities
for working on the questions,puzzles,and enigmas that
are inherent in human existence.
The beauty of design as an approach to life is its creative
opportunistic tendencies.The entrepreneurialism associated
with these tendencies has always been a driving force,and
one that has been effective in negotiating change at all scales.
From elegant objects to infrastructure,design has the distinct
capacity to affect the context in which it sits.
Visionary,optimistic,and opportunistic,design is different
than instrumental problem solving.Instrumental problem
solving works to solve defined problems.Design works within
a rich mental space in which problems are the impetus for
work that converts ideas into things that are integrally linked
46 Design Unbound
to human behavior,perceptions,values,and desires.As such,
design may or may not solve problems directly.It engages
the life around problems.This distinguishes design not only
in its focus,but also in the methods and practices it engages.
It requires a different set of skills and capacities,a different
disposition,and a different set of instincts.Quite simply,
design has a different DNA.
The optimism associated with design is a skeptical optimism.
It is an optimism shaped by questions that arise.It is not
abstract or naïve.As a process that interweaves thought
with action,one receives feedback from the action,and
the feedback leads to new questions that expand understanding
of the problem space.Thought is grounded through
the test of theory hitting the real world.Trying out ideas
leads to failures and unexpected new questions,and
ultimately to greater depth,breadth,and sophistication of
the responses.Design activity relies on perpetual skepticalperpetual skepticalperpetual
optimism.Optimism that is called into action again and again,
as one faces new questions,limited successes,and things
that do not work.Optimism drives design forward,leveraging
learning and insight from action that is integrally associated
with questions.
Design’s skeptical optimism is aimed at the world.It serves
to translate and mediate change.It serves to assimilate and
shape the ongoing disruption and evolution of culture,society,
and technology.Further,design makes things that participate
in the evolution of culture,society,and technology.Think
about the iPod to iPhone to iPad revolution,and its impact on
how we express ourselves,how we connect to each other,and
how we work with new platforms of information.
47 A Visionary Pursuit:Optimistic and Opportunistic
And we use design for speculation.Although much of design
is fueled by problems,not all design is about solving problems.
We also use design as a means for speculating how things
could be.This form of design often invents problems as
vehicles through which to speculate.
Speculating through design thrives on imagination.“It aims
to create spaces for discussion and debate about alternative
ways of being,to open up new perspectives on what are
sometimes called wicked problems,and to inspire and encourage
people’s imaginations to flow freely.Design speculations
can act as a catalyst for collectively redefining our relationship
to reality.”¹
48 Design Unbound
TheIntentionof
ThisBook
49 The Intention of This Book
The world just came together so quickly.We have little
understanding of its true diversity.
—Tim El-Hady,2010²
We are forcing the past as a solution set.But the past
as a solution set is not a viable option.We need a new
tool set.
—John Rendon,2010³
The intention of this book is to talk about a new tool set—one
that is conceived out of architectural design,nurtured through
need,and poised to act in contexts that we expect to be
increasingly complex and connected.
But to create new things that resonate in a“world that has just
come together so quickly”—one in which true diversity is now
in play—and to think about designing for change in this world,
in addition to tools,one needs to engage new dispositions and
instincts that employ this new tool set to advantage.These
tools,dispositions,and instincts are made possible by a new
set of frames—a new window on the world—that allows us to
understand the world in terms that are more aligned with the
forces at play in this unique moment of our evolution.
50 Design Unbound
ACambrianMoment
andOurWhitewater
World:AMoment
ofRapidChange,
IntenseDiversification,
andEvolution
51 A Cambrian Moment and Our Whitewater World
We all recognize that we are in a unique moment in our
evolution because of the exponential increase in information
and interconnectivity of everything around us,and the very
real human responses to these.It is a Cambrian moment
of profound change as we move from understanding static
societal building blocks to flows of exchanges,from rigid
organizational structures to dynamic networked relationships,
from thinking systems to thinking ecosystems.
We all recognize that we are also becoming much more
global and urban,meaning there is greater diversity in closer
proximity.And we are increasingly vying for resources that are
more limited every day.As we become more global and urban,
increased interconnectivity creates greater interdependency;
things spread faster and farther,and greater diversity in closer
proximity is easily connected to other greater diversities in
closer proximity.All of this has transformed global dynamics
in unprecedented ways,as it affects our cities,our environments,and
our cultures,at all scales.The result is that we are
engaged in a whole new set of issues and conflicts that are
without a clear resolution or end state.⁴
In the past,we had punctuated evolution.Things changed
abruptly and after the abrupt change,we had decades of stability
that enabled us to build deep institutional models based
upon infrastructural and technological shifts.But,today’s new
infrastructure of connectivity may not level out.We are in an
era of profound change,in which acceleration,instability,and
disturbance may become the norm.
This is a white water world—a world of dynamic flows in
which so much of what we do and know is radically contingent
on the context at the moment one is looking at it,or
operating in it.The shifting of structural plates of connectivity
52 Design Unbound
through new digital technologies has created a world broadly
connected,rapidly changing,and radically contingent.
In this white water world,the challenges we face are both
fundamental and substantial.Our ways of learning and work-fundamental and substantial.Our ways of learning and work-fundamental and substantial.Our ways of learning and work
ing,our ways of creating value,and of imagining,innovating,
and shaping our futures must be reframed.
But in addition to being a Cambrian moment of profound
change in which we face fundamental and substantial challenges,it
is also a Cambrian moment of rapid and intense
diversification of what we can do,who we can do it with,
and how.We are seeing an efflorescence of new things,new
practices,and new kinds of relationships across all sorts of
boundaries with both good and bad outcomes.
Exponential increase in information and interconnectivity
means that we can do things differently,from business,to
governance,to media and science.“The Internet offers us
an increasingly thickened network of communications with
pre-existing relations and the casting of a broader net that
captures many more,and more varied,relations.What is
emerging is a framework that sees the networked society as
entailing an abundance of connections and more densely
deployed attention.”⁵
“Increasingly thickened network of connections”and“more
densely deployed attention”mean that we have more
substantial exchanges with existing colleagues and friends.
“Casting a broader net”means that we now engage with a
larger,and more diverse group,in both casual and substantial
exchanges,intentional or not.This means that we can do
things differently as we focus attention in areas that were
formerly confined within specific professional,institutional,
53 A Cambrian Moment and Our Whitewater World
or disciplinary domains,and we can do things differently
because of the scale of attention that the Internet affords.
In monitory democracy⁶ or participatory governance,
citizens become involved in the direction and operation
of political systems;the streetcraft of citizen movements,
from“Arab Spring”to“Occupy Wall Street,”meant citizens
became involved in the shifting of power within political
systems;participatory culture has fans and audiences
becoming writers and creators of all sorts;the X-Prize and
citizen science engage the public in competitions and design
radical breakthroughs that are intended to benefit humanity;
Wikipedia and fan fiction engage specific publics in creating
factual or fictional content around topics that interest them;
interest groups provide advice and social scaffolding in areas
of health and life experience;participation in MMOG’s and
ARG’s engages diverse players across geopolitical and economic
boundaries;crowdsourced funding allows individuals
to participate in creative ideas that lead to all sorts of tangible
and intangible projects,from cultural artifacts to startups;
and bots and trolls begin to impact the hegemony of states.
We truly can do things differently.
At the same time,digital technologies let us do things differently—from
the digital humanities to 3-D printing—and
emerging analytical and visualization methodologies let us
see differently.Doing and seeing differently means that we
begin to interact with and experience the world differently.
A new twenty-first century ontology is emerging.
In this Cambrian moment of intense diversification and evolution,the
challenges are substantial and fundamental;working
on them creates an environment of demand and opportunity.and opportunity.and
New demands together with new affordances are the core
driving forces of this white water world.
54 Design Unbound
WhyThis?WhyNow?
The(TIM)N
Framework
55 Why This? Why Now? The (TIM)N
Framework
Societies are always evolving;reshaping themselves and readjusting
roles,responsibilities,and relationships as the contexts
in which they sit shift and change.Dynamic forces from other
societies,and from the natural environment,sculpt responses
that force evolutionary change.But sometimes forces are
such that an entire set of societies will shift simultaneously
into a new form,creating an evolutionary change of global
proportion.We are at one of those moments.
What makes this particular moment so unique is what political
scientist David Ronfeldt characterizes as the progression
from a triformist to a quadriformist era of societal form.
Ronfeldt looks at the long-range evolution of societies in his
TIMN framework,which distinguishes between four forms of
societal organization based upon different modes of interconnectivity,and
different communication modalities.Tribes
(T) are kinship-based social units,structured as extendedT) are kinship-based social units,structured as extendedT
families,clans,and other lineage systems.Tribes rely on oral
communication,especially storytelling,for their cohesion,and
therefore,depend upon proximity of individuals.Institutions
(I) are hierarchical in nature,and are exemplified by the
church,army,or bureaucratic state.Institutional form relies
on the transcribing of oral communication into writing that
can be disseminated to larger groups as books,records and
commands.At first handwritten,the printing press scaled
the capacity to produce documents around which institutions
formed and operated.Markets (M) are about competitive
exchange;merchants and traders,responding to forces of
supply and demand,rely on interconnectivity and mobility
provided by infrastructure.And finally,networks (N) are
web-like ties that rely on digital hyperconnectivity across
time and space.
56 Design Unbound
In Ronfeldt’s TIMN framework,one societal form does not
replace another.Instead,they build on each other with each
form arising in response to how new communication,and
new forms of interconnectivity and exchange,allow society
to“solve problems that the other sectors have not done
well enough at;in fact problems that the other sectors may
have even created.…As each new sector grows,it modifies
all of the old sectors;and vast re-balancings and strengthenings
occur.”⁷
Healthy evolution is dependent on the ability of a society to
combine forms into an integrated system.In Ronfeldt’s framework,institutional
form did not replace tribes but instead
evolution produced a biformist era of tribes + institutions;and
then a triformist era of tribes + institutions + markets.
Progression from one era to another is never smooth.
During the rise of a new form,subversion precedes
addition:When a new form arises,it has subversive
effects on the old order that weaken the old forms,
before it has additive effects that serve to consolidate
a new order.…New modes of conflict and cooperation
emerge with each evolutionary shift:A society’s efforts
to transition from one stage to the next,or relate to a
society that is at a different stage,are bound to create
internal and external contradictions;indeed,the values,
actors,and“spaces”favored by one form tend to contradict
those favored by another.Thus,the rise of a new
form induces epochal philosophical,ideological,and
material struggles that are jarring to a society’s stability,
transformability,and sustainability.⁸
57
We see evidence of“epochal philosophical,ideological and
material struggles”in protest and insurgent movements that
are occurring around the world;in the disruption of global
economic stability;in the intensification of the dynamics of
trade,finance,environmental policies,protocols,and events,
immigration,and emigration;in finance and industry practices;in
shifting ecological concerns.
From a TIMN-framework perspective,none of these are ordinary
movements,events,or struggles.These are not ordinary
times,as we wrestle ourselves out of what Ronfeldt calls the
triformist era—an era that existed from the eighteenth to
twentieth centuries following the spread of the market form
alongside tribal and institutional forms—to a new quadriformist
era,which began in the mid to late twentieth century,with
the rise of network forms of organization.
But beyond the disruption that comes with the addition of
a new form,this new evolutionary shift is unprecedented in
ways that force a revision of Ronfeldt’s framework.Networks,
as web-like ties that rely on digital hyperconnectivity,are not
like tribes,institutions,or markets.They are not entities.They
are not things,and so they function differently.They are agile;
they can reform and adapt quickly to changing circumstances,
reshaping themselves to cut,fill in,or extend connections.
Networks scale far and fast,whereas tribes,institutions,and
markets take considerable effort and resources to grow in
size and scope.And networks are available to all,regardless of
one’s place in any other organizational structure.
Networks have always existed in tribes,in institutions,and
in markets,as part of the organizational glue of the form,
but now amplified by nonmaterial infrastructures,and being
nonproximity dependent,networks have emerged as their
Why This? Why Now? The (TIM)N
Framework
58 Design Unbound
own form of communication-rich organization,and societies
are shapeshifting because of them.
Digital networks penetrate existing structures,reforming
them.Participants in these structures begin to interact
according to a whole new set of evolving rules and norms.But
additionally,networks have become an entire realm of activity
around which other activities and sectors of activities—such
as social media,the new maker movement,open government,
international piracy—emerge.⁹ These new activities and
sectors of activity are radically transforming the other three
societal forms.They are affecting how tribes,institutions,and
markets form;how they evolve;how they function,scale,and
interact.Markets are becoming more global and more distributed.Institutions
are becoming more fragile or agile,and
tribal trust-based relationships are becoming more important
and relevant again.No longer dependent on physical copresence,individuals
can participate in multiple tribal constructs
simultaneously.
Given how the networked societal form is radically transforming
the other three forms,we propose that the TIMN
framework is better articulated as TIM to the Nth power,or
(TIM)N
,where N—the network form—operates to exponentially
influence the other three forms.
Networks are fluid.They are dynamic.They operate by
different principles.These dynamics are exchanges and
flows between individuals,between individuals in different
kinds of social groups,between different groups,and
between different groups or constituencies and their larger
social environments.They require that we think,operate,and
design differently.Working on complex problems in a (TIM)N
era,with networks as a dominant form of interconnectivity,
59
means that we must reconceptualize the way we see the
world around us as a hyperinterconnected and interdependent
entity.
Things behave differently in a network form.They are more
fluid than solid,more capable of shifting exchanges,relationships,and
interdependencies,and more about complex living
systems than resolute structures.We need to be thinking
differently.We need to be thinking physics with feedback,and
complexity with coherence.We need a new way to see the
world so we can better operate in it.
Why This? Why Now? The (TIM)N
Framework
60 Design Unbound
SeeingtheWorldAnew:
AThirdWindow
61 Seeing the World Anew:A Third Window
From Newton to Darwin: From Immutable Laws to
Processes of Selection
REDUCTIONISM is the most natural thing in the
world to grasp.It’s simply the belief that‘a whole can
be understood completely if you understand its parts,
and the nature of their‘sum.’No one in her left brain
could reject reductionism.
—D.R.Hofstadter¹⁰
Reductionism has been the dominant approach to science
since the 1600s.It has marked out its territory in scientific
theory and methodology,and has been responsible for the
separation of inquiry and knowledge construction into disciplines,subdisciplines,sub-subdisciplines,and
so on.Under
the methodological umbrella of reductionism,one“divides all
difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible,
and as many as are required to solve them in the best way,and
then conducts thought in a given order,beginning with the
simplest and most easily understood objects,and graduallysimplest and most easily understood objects,and graduallysimplest
ascending to the knowledge of the most complex.”¹¹
For almost four hundred years,until the beginning of the
twentieth century,science set out to explain the nature of
things in terms of fundamental physics that could explain
all phenomena through laws that supported reductionist
approaches.Newton provided the Western world with the
tools to think about the interaction of things and forces
as an orderly clockwork universe,wound up by his famous
three laws.
The physical and metaphysical foundations laid by Newton’s
laws created a first window to a modern view of the world.
Thermodynamics,and then,more significantly,Darwin’s
62 Design Unbound
evolutionary theory,opened a second window that marked
a critical epistemological shift from understanding the
world’s dynamics as governed by immutable laws,to a focus
on processes in which the state—the characteristics
and behavior—of something is contingent on its history.
“Darwin set us on a wholly new approach to the living world.
He essentially was telling us that living systems arise not outnot outnot
of the set of immutable laws that regulate all physical order,
but rather as the result of natural processes that create living
order out of abundant chaos…that process is more important
than law in shaping living systems.”¹²
The shift from laws to processes is highly significant.Laws
are determinate and can be applied backwards and forwards.
Processes,however,while subscribing to constraints,create
indeterminate outcomes that are contingent on how random
events unfolding in time interact with those constraints.In
other words,they are contingent on their histories—on what
leads to what.
We all know that for Darwin,the process of“creating living
order out of abundant chaos”was a process of natural selection,in
which competition for resources in the environment
works to make certain heritable variations—genetic mutations
that arise by chance—in species traits more valuable
to the survival of the species than others;that individuals
possessing certain traits that make them better suited for
the struggle for local resources contribute more offspring
to succeeding generations.In Darwinism,change in the
environment leads to reciprocal or responsive change in the
species,through selecting out those traits that are less fit
for survival.Darwin saw this as a stabilizing process that was
gradual and slow.
63 Seeing the World Anew:A Third Window
One of the major problems with the Darwinian window is
that,as a theory of incremental optimization,it does not help
us understand how radical changes occur in species and
environments.“The Darwinian process is inadequate to the
task of explaining how life originated or,for that matter,how
new species come into existence.”¹³ While the Newtonian
window looked out on an eternally unchanging universe,the
Darwinian window fails to explain the more radical changes
that structure our universe from the“messy murky causal
relationships displayed by genes and phenotypes”¹⁴ to human
interventions affecting global climate,or any multilevel,multicomponent,contingent,and
feedback-laden phenomena.
A revised and expanded epistemology is required to face the
challenge of understanding these kinds of complex behaviors.
A Third Window Framed by Ecology Theory
So,we suggest that while shifting from Newton to Darwin
moves us in the right direction,it doesn’t take us far enough.
“Neither of these models satisfactorily explains how real
change—in the form of creative advance or emergence—
takes place in nature.”¹⁵ Nor do they explain the sheer
abundance of diversity—often with redundant functionality—
or the richness of seemingly gratuitous characteristics.Both
of these metaphysical foundations are ill-suited to sustain
our current search for a comprehensive description of how
complex living systems work.Both windows are insufficient
for framing the complexity,the excesses,and the contingent
dynamics of the world.
We need a new window;a third epistemological lens through
which to view and act in the world.For this we turn to ecology
64 Design Unbound
theory and borrow the concept of a third window from theoretical
ecologist Robert Ulanowicz.¹⁶
Ecology theory grew out of the intersection of new
sciences that were emerging at the end of the twentieth
century—whole systems behavior,cybernetics,and network
theory—with the classical science of physiology (the scientific
study of the mechanical,physical,and biochemical
functions in living organisms).These new sciences extended
the field of physiology beyond the scale of the individual
organism or species—the Darwinian focus.“It was (a) heady
mix of whole-system behavior,stochasticity,cybernetics
(circular configurations of causal action that are a key driver
behind system-level behavior in ecosystems) and networks…
that led many physical scientists to become systems ecologists—a
vibrant and fecund domain in comparison with
nonliving systems.”¹⁷
Within the emerging field that we now call ecology,biologists,
physiologists,and other physical scientists became interested
in how organisms other than humans functioned,and
then how whole systems functioned.They began to study
ecosystems.This required thinking beyond classical physics,
physiology,or evolutionary science;it required thinking in
terms of networks and the flows of material and energy
through time in complex webs of contingent exchanges.
Ecosystems are complex systems.The word complex
comes from the Latin root plecetere: to weave,entwine.
“In complex systems,many simple parts are irreducibly
entwined,and the field of complexity is itself an entwining
of many different fields.”¹⁸
65 Seeing the World Anew:A Third Window
Shifting from Newtonian mechanics,to Darwin’s evolutionary
biology,to process ecology is a shift from immutable laws;
to processes that are associated with linear development of
single organisms and their communities;to complex systems
processes that are dependent upon the vibrant exchange and
flow of energy and matter between many organisms,their
communities,and their environment.
In ecosystems,these complex system processes function to
sustain and grow the system.They do this through autocatalytic
mutualism.Autocatalytic mutualism is the genetic code
of ecosystems.The term mutualism refers to the mutual interdependencies
between two or more species in an ecocsystem
in which all benefit from the association.Autocatalism means
that the system is constantly generating an increase of energy
and matter to sustain or grow itself from within.It does this by
relying upon the mutual dependencies at work.
The very existence of flowers and hummingbirds
requires an entirely different account than that which
reductionism might have offered.In its place…autocatalytic
mutualisms.Thus,the flower and hummingbird exist
because when the bird feeds upon nectar,pollen in the
flower rubs onto the beak of the hummingbird,sticks to
it,is transported to the next flower,then rubs off on the
stamen of the next flower,pollinating that second flower.
…It is by this quixotic fact,the stickiness of the beak
for pollen,that flowers and hummingbirds exist in the universe…we
explain the physical existence of the flowers
and hummingbirds in the universe by this mutualism.…
The entire biosphere is broadly mutualistic,food webs
and all,given sunlight and other sources of free energy
and a few simple chemicals.…(In fact,) coordinated
behaviors by mutualistic partners seem required.¹⁹
66 Design Unbound
In Darwinism,competition is the mechanism that drives
species development,and it operates at the level of the
individual organism or species community.Constraints
external to the biological system of organism or community
force it into competition with others.The mechanism within
ecology is a complex process of entwined mutual dependencies;of
many organisms participating inmany organisms participating inmany various mutual
dependencies.Mutuality is essential and competition derives
from that.²⁰ This is in stark contrast to the conventional
Darwinian narrative.
Darwinism’s revolutionary work set in motion a completely
different notion of causality;one that was not dependent on
laws with absolute outcomes,but processes whose outcomes
are affected by a changing environment.
Evolution under Darwinian terms is a slow process,playing
out over generations.It does not explain the impact of irregular
events on the system.Yet we now know that irregular
events—disturbances—are prevalent and essential for theand essential for theand
development of any ecosystem’s resiliency.Ecosystems
assimilate and adapt to radical events.
Overwhelmingly,scientists concentrate on elucidating
the rules that give rise to order and coherence,but,in
complex situations (such as living systems),such explication
is never independent of the related dynamics of
chance and arbitrary phenomena…the effects of which
propagate over the same networks of relationships as do
the dynamics that build structure.What is absent from
the conventional approach is the necessary,and somewhat
paradoxical role,that chance and disarray play in
the persistence of complex systems,because,without
67 Seeing the World Anew:A Third Window
them,a system lacks the flexibility to adapt and becomes
defenseless in the face of novel perturbation.²¹
Emerging ecology theory recognizes not only the impact but
the invaluable role of disturbance to evolution.Disturbance
is not only an integral part of any natural system,but“the
greatest diversity occurs in landscapes large enough to
contain various serial or successional stages as the result of
disturbance events.”²² Disturbance drives evolution.
Relying on chance and novel disruptions mean that ecosystems
do not exhibit firm causality.Instead of fixed laws or
prescribed pathways,we now need to think in propensities.
Propensities are tendencies to act in a particular way given an
entity’s capacities,its dispositions,and instincts.Propensities
evolve,adapting under different contingent conditions.
Propensities are a more realistic way to think about possible
responses to events in a complex and contingent dynamic
system because they are behaviors that adjust in concert with
the rest of the ecosystem’s responses.
From Rules to Process to Propensities
So,autocatalytic mutualism,which allows us to see beyond
classical notions of competition to a living system driven
more by collaboration in a contingent context;evolution and
resiliency that are dependent upon chance and novel perturbations;and
propensities rather than causal processes or
fixed laws;make ecology a productive third window through
which to see the world anew.
68 Design Unbound
ThreeEcologies
69 Three Ecologies
Looking at the world anew through an ecological lens
means more than just seeing the environment differently.
It is about using ecology theory and ecosystem dynamics
to see everything differently.We can also apply an ecological
lens to society,through the (TIM)N
framework,which sets
about explaining the social ecology of a networked,quadriformist
era.
Ecology is the scientific study of the relationships between
living organisms,and between these organisms and their
environment.An ecosystem is the aggregated whole of the
dynamically interacting parts.So,we can define social ecology
as the relationships and interactions between individuals,
and between individuals and the world,in terms of societal
exchanges and influences.Just as ecosystems in nature can
be studied at different scales and with different relationships—they
border,overlap,and nest within each other—we
need to understand social ecosystems as communities that
do the same.Ranging in scale from families,to neighborhoods,
to cities,to regions,whether face-to-face or digitally networked
communities,they can be approached,studied,and
understood as webs of entangled exchanges between people
situated in temporal and spatial contexts.
Social ecology also concerns itself with nonmaterial“variables
of interest”²³ that have to do with the ways we live together.
These variables are determined by that which binds us
together as social beings,and therefore include various kinds
of interactions:economic,political,cultural,and psychosocial.
All such interactions are changing in form,scale,and processes
and protocols of engagement,causing disruption and
opportunity in our social ecologies.Disruptive and difficult
economic,political,and cultural events emerge,too often
70 Design Unbound
unsuspected and unforeseen,and new kinds of activity come
into being with both negative and positive effects.As Ronfeldt
points out,new actions form around“epochal philosophical,
and ideological struggles”but also new kinds of activity
emerge.In terms of the social ecology,it really is a question of
constructing new modalities of group-being,and new systems
and practices of economic,political,and cultural interaction.
While“the conservation laws for energy and matter concern
substance rather than form,(social) process,ideas,
communication,organization,differentiation,pattern,and
so on,are matters of form rather than substance.”²⁴ This is
why Ronfeldt’s framework,which focuses on the evolution of
societal form,is so valuable.
Mental Ecology
It is not only species that are becoming extinct but also
the words,phrases,and gestures of human solidarity.
—Felix Guattari²⁵
Human social interaction is deeply dependent upon the sharing
and exchange of ideas—ideas as beliefs,as concepts,and
as knowledge construction.These too work within complex
ecosystems of exchange.Therefore,we can talk about mental
ecologies of ideas and their contexts.
Mental ecology concerns itself with“a new way of thinking
about ideas and about those aggregates of ideas which (we)
call“minds.”²⁶ This way of thinking was introduced by Gregory
Bateson as the“ecology of mind,”or the ecology of ideas.
The questions Bateson raises in his seminal book Steps to
an Ecology of Mind,are“ecological:How do ideas interact?
71 Three Ecologies
Is there some sort of natural selection that determines the
survival of some ideas and the extinction or death of others?
What sort of economics limits the multiplicity of ideas in a
given region of mind? What are the necessary conditions for
stability (or survival) of such system or subsystem?”²⁷
For Bateson,mind is synonymous with a cybernetic system.It
is the“total information-processing,trial-and-error completing
unit”²⁸ that is relevant at a specific scale,or within a specific
boundary condition.This means that there are mental ecologies
at different scales.They nest inside of each other,just
as ecosystems contain other ecosystems.While“Freudian
psychology expanded the concept of mind inwards to include
the whole communication system within the body—the
autonomic,the habitual,and the vast range of unconscious
process,(Bateson) expands the mind outwards”²⁹ as well.
Moreover,the very meaning of“‘survival’becomes
different when we stop talking about the (mere) survival
of something bounded by the skin and start to think of
the survival of the system of ideas in circuit.The contents
of the skin are randomized at death and the pathways
within the skin are randomized.But the ideas,under
further transformation may go on out in the world in
books or works of art.Socrates as a bioenergetic individual
is dead.But much of him still lives as a component
in the contemporary ecology of ideas.…The cybernetic
epistemology,which I have offered you,would suggest
a new approach.The individual mind is immanent but
not only in the body.It is immanent also in pathways and
messages outside the body;and there is a larger Mind of
which the individual mind is only a subsystem.This larger
Mind is…immanent in the total interconnected social
system and planetary ecology.³⁰
72 Design Unbound
Just as social ecologies exist at multiple interoperational
scales,ranging from the local to the global,mental ecologies
can be understood as the interaction of ideas in the context
of the individual,in the context of a society,or of a network
of societies.And mental ecologies might exist together in
conflict,just as environmental ecosystems do.Increasing globalization,driven
by postindustrial capitalism,affects not only
the environment and our social systems but is“penetrating
people’s attitudes,sensibilities,and minds,”and endangering
what the French philosopher Félix Guattari calls“human
singularity”—human subjectivity in all its uniqueness.³¹
In The Three Ecologies³² Guattari argues that“‘Individuals
are captured by their environment,by ideas,tastes,models,captured by their environment,by ideas,tastes,models,captured
ways of being,the images that are constantly injected into
them,and even by the refrains that go round and round in
their heads.’Surrounded by all these different refrains which
pass through us,it is difficult to know where,or rather who‘we’
are.”³³ Just as environmental ecosystems are sustained by
their biodiversity—the variety of their parts and processes—
mental ecologies,as a philosophical construct,depend upon
this same robust diversity.
An Ecology of Matter: We Are Matter Too
Ronfeldt helps us understand the epochal transformations
that are happening within the global social ecology.Bateson
helps us think about mental ecologies.Meanwhile,science
is allowing us to know ourselves better within an ecology
of matter.
As science has rescaled its focus from the universe,to the
planet,to living organisms—shifting from seeing the world as
73 Three Ecologies
dominated by physics to one that is biologically framed—and
as technologies retool and shift from operating on things that
are external,to living organisms,to operating on organisms
themselves,to operating on the very biological matter of
organisms,we begin to enter truly original cultural terrain in
which we grasp that we are made of matter too.
The way we are influencing the environment at unprecedented
scales,and at accelerating rates,further confirms
the materiality of our existence.“After a century of unparalleled
scientific and technological progress we have made
our presence known to the planet in the most dramatic
and self-defeating fashion.(Were) the Earth’s response to
man’s‘stimulation’…localized…we would be safe;but instead
we are faced with a very different kind of‘feedback’:a bewilderingly
complex array of interrelated and unpredictably
erratic fluctuations over which we have little or no control
and which remind us that the whole world is a giant ecosystem
with a sensitive biosphere that has taken 4.5 billion years
to evolve.”³⁴
Our performance—how we consume and create waste—is
undeniably and irrevocably linked to the performance of the
environment.So we now begin to understand things,bodies,
buildings,cities,and landscapes as contiguous systems of
matter that involve exchanges at all levels.Productive and
seductive,design’s role is not benign or docile in a context
governed by the potent interaction of matter at all scales.
We come to know the world of matter through the information
we have of it.Pervasive information;its diversity and
sheer abundance—and the management of this abundance—
is changing the way we do everything.We generate and
74 Design Unbound
consume meaning through how we interpret information to
construct cognition,culture,and society.
Understanding that we are matter too,infused with systems
of meaning,and part of an interconnected and interdependent
world,requires a major shift of perception,but one that is
necessary if we are to take on the key problems and opportunities
of our time.
The etymology of eco is the Greek word öikos,meaning home.
Home is the place we make our own,where we find our psychological
and emotional identities.And home is the physical
space that gives context and texture to our psychological
and emotional stories.Our identities are integrally fused with
these places as individuals interacting within social groups,
and as a cultural and biological species within the environment.A
window framed by ecology theory that registers as
three ecologies—social ecologies,mental ecologies,and
ecologies of matter—allows us to see the world as our home,
dynamically interconnected through human relationships,
ideas,and matter.This is a fundamental change of worldview—a
change as significant as the Copernican revolution in
the sixteenth century.
Looking at the world through a third window provides a new
way to see,but it also provides a conceptual and operational
framework for work we might want to do.It provides a way to
reframe problem or project constraints and opportunities—
what we call the brief—by expanding the kinds of questions
we ask.But it also provides a larger playground from which
creative work can emerge,and then the lens through which
to assess that work.And it is scale-agnostic,meaning that it
75 Three Ecologies
helps work at all scales:from the micro to the meta,and from
the hyperlocal to the global.
To date,Western society’s worldview has been dominated
by principles associated with the Newtonian framework of
classical physics,and the Darwinian framework of evolution.
Too often,we operate as if the universe is a mechanical
system composed of elemental building blocks that subscribe
to linear,deterministic,and predictable laws.Our view of
society is as a competitive struggle for existence and success.
And all of this has been dominated by a belief in unlimited
material progress achieved through economic and technological
growth.
This may have worked in the past,but no longer.New forms
of connect-ivity and exchange dominate our world and
our actions.Information has changed from something we
consume,to something we live in.New tools are shaping new
material,social,and mental practices.Wicked problems are
getting more wicked,and new kinds of complex problems
are emerging.Doing work in this world is not just business
as usual.The (TIM)N
framework helps us understand why.It
helps us understand the uniqueness of this moment.It helps
us understand the form of the global society we are evolving.
And it helps us understand the implications of those mechanisms
of change.
Looking at the world through a third window adds an ecological
perspective to the Newtonian and Darwinian windows.
Ecology theory allows us to merge the scientific with the
ineffable in profound ways.It helps us to see the interconnectedness
of all things;that things,whether they be tangible
or intangible,do not have fixed boundaries of impact,and
despite having visually discernible outlines,they are not fixed
76 Design Unbound
containers sealed off from the contexts in which they exist.
All things operate in larger contexts,which are interactive
systems of exchanges.
Looking at the world through a third window with three
ecological registers—as material,social,and mental
ecologies—gives us a framework to look at the economics
of any thing or action.We can begin to assess the“value”
and“cost”of things and actions in their contexts from the
material perspective,the social perspective,and in the realm
of ideas.It gives us a way to think through and articulate
the often ineffable external forces on,and responses to,the
thing or action.
Faced with a world that is increasingly complex,connected,
and rapidly changing,we need a new tool set.We have new
affordances in the form of new tools and new practices and,
even more importantly,we can now view,understand,and
learn about the world through an expanded and blended
epistemology in which the ecological perspective of complexity
provides a new set of lenses to make the messiness of
the world tractable.The agency and impact of the work we do
in the world depends upon this shift in perspective,and a new
tool set forged by this blended epistemology.
78 Design Unbound
DesignUnbound
andDesigning
forEmergence
79 Design Unbound and Designing for Emergence
Whether applied to self-organized forms of matter-energy
or to the unplanned results of human agency,new
concepts of (non-linear causality and self-organization)
demand a new methodology…a more experimental
attitude toward reality and an increased awareness of
the potential for self-organization inherent in even the
humblest forms of matter-energy.
—Manuel De Landa³⁵
Unbound from Thingness
When people think of design,it is usually as problem solving
that results in the making of things.We think of things as
having form (shape),material (what it is made of and how it
is made),and scale (its size in relationship to us and to other
things).Things can hold meaning.And they can be understood
to have value;they exist in some kind of market.
But not all problems to be solved result in,or can result in,
things that have material solidity.Many of the important
problems have to do with systems and models that are not
physical,or they are wicked,meaning that they do not lend
themselves to solutions at all:education,overpopulation,
water shortages,climate change,health,geopolitical conflicts.
To work in and on these problems requires more than fiddling
with things in contexts.It requires that we work on the contexts
themselves.
This is not to say that one does not design things.Much
of the joy,beauty,and wonder of the world is experienced
through things:the taste of an apple,the texture of a
garment,the tonality of a piece of music,the space of
a church,a mosque,or a street,even the“ping”of a text
80 Design Unbound
coming in.But it is the design of things in relationship to each
other,and in relationship to their contexts—the social,mental,
and material ecologies to which they belong—that gives the
object a different kind of impact and gives design a different
kind of agency.
Architecture,as a design practice,designs things that have
form,materiality,and scale,but it specifically deals with
things that are containers—contexts—for the messiness of
human life.From a piece of furniture,to a room,a house,a
building,a complex ensemble of buildings,cities,landscapes,
and territorial systems of occupation,architecture is about
designing contexts in which things happen.These contexts
can accommodate well-practiced relationships and behaviors,
or they can open up new possibilities of exchange,interaction,
and meaning creation.
If we imagine one further level of abstraction,we can imagine
designing nonmaterial contexts;not things but systems
that are dynamic contexts where things happen.As containers
for complex relationships and exchanges,these dynamic
system contexts are analogous to ecosystems.So design
unbound from thingness allows us to imagine how we might
design contexts that are ecosystems for new possibilities of
exchange,interaction,and meaning creation.
In order for design to have agency and impact on the
world today,it must operate on contexts as well as content;
understanding their interdependencies through the specific
exchanges they participate in.Design unbound from its material
thingness is set free to work on designing contexts—as
ecosystems—that can be shaped to achieve something.
81 Design Unbound and Designing for Emergence
Unbound from Disciplinary Boundaries
We might study ecosystems from different perspectives:as
a biologist,a climatologist,geologist,behavioral scientist,
ethnographer,storyteller,musician,artist.Disciplinary
perspectives allow us to unpack the complexity for different
purposes.But ecosystems are not definable by discrete
functionality,so designing new contexts that are integrated,
rich,and coherent means that we need to work vigorously
across and above disciplinary boundaries.
Design unbound from its home disciplines—architecture,
landscape architecture,urban design,product and graphic
design—is set free to see the problem from other perspectives
in order to take on the agenda of the whole,and to
design in an ecosystemic manner;to design as an ecologist
of social,mental,and material ecologies.
Designing for Emergence
Making progress on complex problems that are not about
things requires thinking and designing with an understanding
that one cannot design for absolute outcomes.The future
cannot be designed.The future emerges out of actions in
the present as they are influenced and interpreted through
actions of the past.One must design understanding principles
of emergence.
El Sistema had tangible designed things,from paper instruments
to school buildings.And it had intangible things in the
form of mechanisms that did work for them,from funding
platforms,to policies,to teaching and mentoring protocols.
But they were only effective because they were part of an
82 Design Unbound
integrated system that was a context for change,and
because it was a system that was designed to be adaptive.
Like an ecosystem,it was designed as a system that was
expected to emerge over time,adapting to different communities—different
social ecologies—and adapting through
an unfolding process.
El Sistema and its component parts were things.But the
real change occurred because they were mechanisms that
created small-scale,simple interactions among the diverse
individual parts that led to more complex behavioral changes
to the social systems themselves.Intuitively,Abreu understood
the properties and efficacy of emergent systems.
Complex structures,forms,and behaviors emerge from
bottom-up,self-organizing interactions of different agents.
If we want to have agency—creating new things and shaping
change—we need to understand the histories of how
things come to be;not as inevitabilities defined by fixed rules,
or resulting from optimization processes,but as emergent
histories informed by the exchange dynamics of systems.
We need to think in terms of propensities,not predictability.
If we want to have agency,we need to understand emergence.
We need to think in terms of emergence and we need to
design for emergence.Understanding emergence lets us see
the world in a new way and designing for emergence lets us
put that new vision to work in the world with agency at many
scales,from the small and catalytic,to the ecosystemic.
To do this we need new methods.We need a new tool set.
84 Design Unbound
ANewToolSet
85 A New Tool Set
In the men’s magazine The Art of Manliness,there is an article
“12 Tools Every Man Should Have in His Toolbox.”³⁶ Hammers,
screwdrivers,tape measures,wrenches,pliers,drill and bits,
saws,levels,and knives are laid out with comments on specific
types and uses.
In TechRepublic’s blog piece,“10 Linux and open source
developer tools you should not overlook,”³⁷ and on numerous
other blog sites,programming tools are discussed in language
that is coded to the community of web developers.In both
instances,it is clear that the tool is directly associated with
the specific job it is meant to do.
Designing for agency and resonance in complex contexts that
are continually emerging means that one must work at the
very structural level of the system itself,and within its functional
dynamics.This requires a completely different type of
tool set—one containing tools not associated with a specific
task at hand,but which work on the“instructions set”that
underlies the dynamics of the system—its component parts,
mechanisms,practices,protocols,context,and the interdependent
relationships between all of these.
When we look at problems as only scientific or technical
in nature,removed from the contexts to which they are
responding,they may be complicated, but they generally can
be solved through straightforward,scientific and engineering
design methods.But,when we understand these problems as
embedded within human contexts that organize themselves
through changing social,political,economic,and cultural
belief systems,we are in the realm of complexity.
Complex systems are found in the transitional space between
order and chaos;they are charged by their potential to
86 Design Unbound
slip into chaos while human nature works desperately
to tame them into order.Poised between ordered and chaotic
systems,complex systems are brimming with potential at
all times.
An ordered system is stable.It constrains the agents within it;
it tells the people and stuff within it what to do.Since they are
constrained,agent behavior is predictable and manageable.
In ordered systems,causality can be determined and even
designed or engineered.Simple order refers to systems thatSimple order refers to systems thatSimple order
have few agents and therefore a lower order of interchanges
among those agents.Problems within contexts of simple
order can be worked on and solved through best practices
and expertise associated with one or a few disciplines.
Complicated systems are also ordered,but they contain many
agents and many levels of interchanges.Although cause and
effect is knowable,it may not be immediately obvious,and
must be discovered through work one does in the system.
And the work one does usually involves many disciplines,and
various kinds of expertise.
In chaotic contexts,there are few,if any,constraints,and there
is no order,predictability,or ability to orchestrate outcomes.
Complex systems are similar to chaotic contexts in that
causality cannot be determined.Yet they are like ordered
systems in that the system generally constrains the agents.
But in complex systems,the agents are constantly modifying
the system through their interaction with it,and with each
other.So the systems and agents adapt.They coevolve.Any
order in these systems is emergent and unstable.³⁸
87 A New Tool Set
CHAOS
agents are unconstrained
independent of each other
study through statistics and probability
ORDER
system constrains the agents
causality is clear
TWO OPPOSING STATES
ApJ sketch defining complexity.
88 Design Unbound
ApJ sketch defining complexity.
COMPLICATED ORDER
system constrains the agents
causality is clear
many experts and good practice
SIMPLE ORDER
system constrains the agents
causality is clear
a few experts and best practice
CHAOS
agents are unconstrained
independent of each other
study through statistics and probability
ORDERED SYSTEMS RANGE FROM SIMPLE
TO COMPLICATED
89 A New Tool Set
ApJ sketch defining complexity.
COMPLEXITY
system lightly constrains the agents
agents modify the system with their interaction
NOT CAUSAL - PROPENSITIES
COMPLICATED ORDER
system constrains the agents
causality is clear
many experts and good practice
SIMPLE ORDER
system constrains the agents
causality is clear
a few experts and best practice
CHAOS
agents are unconstrained
independent of each other
study through statistics and probability
COMPLEXITY LIES IN BETWEEN
90 Design Unbound
ApJ sketch defining complexity.
COMPLEXITY
system lightly constrains the agents
agents modify the system with their interaction
NOT CAUSAL - PROPENSITIES
COMPLICATED ORDER
system constrains the agents
causality is clear
many experts and good practice
SIMPLE ORDER
system constrains the agents
causality is clear
a few experts and best practice
CHAOS
agents are unconstrained
independent of each other
study through statistics and probability
SHIFTING COMPLEX PROBLEMS TOWARD ORDER
91 A New Tool Set
In a complicated context,at least one right answer exists.
In a complex context,however,right answers can’t be
ferreted out.It’s like the difference between,say,a Ferrari
and the Brazilian rainforest.Ferraris are complicated
machines,but an expert mechanic can take one apart
and reassemble it without changing a thing.The car is
static,and the whole is the sum of its parts.The rainforest,on
the other hand,is in constant flux—a species
becomes extinct,weather patterns change,an agricultural
project reroutes a water source—and the whole
is far more than the sum of its parts.This is the realm of
“unknown unknowns.”³⁹
“Complex problems change when you look at them,when
you talk with them,and when you engage with them.”⁴⁰
Interactions are nonlinear and disproportionate;minor
changes can have major consequences.
Complex problems cannot be solved for,because any attempt
to create a solution changes the nature of the problem.In fact,
the full landscape of the problem cannot be understood until
provisional actions to work on the problem have been taken;
yet every one of these provisional actions creates unintended
consequences that change the nature of the problem.In
complex problems,the system has a history where past and
present are integrated.Elements evolve with one another and
with the environment;change is irreversible.Anything that
works arises from circumstances.
Therefore,although not solvable in any traditional sense,
complex problems can be worked on by affecting the way
the complex system—the context—around the problem
evolves.And they can be worked in, where things we make are
designed to interact with the emergent change in the system,
92 Design Unbound
to resonate with,and respond to,its emergent relational
properties.
In a keynote talk at the RSD4 Systemic Design conference,
Don Norman,director of the Design Lab at UC San Diego,provided
a thorough and clear definition of complex problems,⁴¹
and then referenced the Yale economist Charles Lindblom’s
concept of“muddling through”⁴² as the most effective
approach for working on complex problems.Seemingly a
surrender to complexity,“muddling through,”for Lindblom,
is not a lack or failure of method,but a system of successive
incremental changes—successive small maneuvers that
one can do quickly,and then assess in order to move on.
The value in Lindblom’s process is that doing real work in
the system is the means for making progress.But we can do
better than heuristic incrementalism.
In working in and on complex problems—shaping the contexts
around them and designing new things for them—there
are three ways to affect the evolution of the complex system.
One can work on the boundary conditions that define the
scope,and therefore the constraints,of the system.The
boundaries of the system determine the constituent agents
and components within—what is included and what is left
out.Secondly,one can create probes that are put into the
system to audit the system as it is changing.And thirdly,one
can create modulators that do work within the system,altering
the system and its evolution.
Of course,every probe has an impact of some kind and
therefore must also be understood as a micromodulator.And
every modulator can be understood as a microprobe,as they
receive information back from what they do,and where they
do it,in the system.
93 A New Tool Set
The new tool set for Design Unbound is designed for workingDesign Unbound is designed for workingDesign Unbound
on these boundaries,and creating probes and modulators
to stimulate change within complex living systems—the
contexts for complex problems involving living things,their
communities,and environments.
The tools we propose are a set of nine knowledge-,skill-,
or method-based instruments for acting through design
in a manner that honors emergence.Some work on the
boundary conditions.Some operate as probes,and others
as modulators,but most operate in an integrated manner,
doing work that affects boundaries while probing and modulating.The
first four come from the DNA of architectural
design—what architects do already and have been doing
successfully for centuries—but now amplified,updated,
and deployed differently.
The tool set also includes three metatools as mechanisms
that do work of a higher order;at the level of the ecology
of the project.They are not abstract constructs but have
emerged from work that we,the authors,have done or been
involved in.Complex projects have evolved ways of working
that now go significantly beyond the design of thing(s).
These projects required recalibrating,stretching,and working
on the design process itself—designing design.
List adverse,but surrendering to the need for some simplicity,
these tools and metatools are presented in abbreviated
form here:
94 Design Unbound
Tools
T.1 Rapid Iteration in a Problem Solving Setting
(Think Fast Chess)
T.2 The Expanded Brief (Jumping Fences)
T.3 Critique (Based In Language Not Science)
T.4 Orchestrating Ambiguity (Structured Ambiguity)
T.5 Skills Matter (Navigating White Water)
T.6 Understanding Emergence
T.7 World Building
T.8 Understanding Networks
T.9 Intervals of Possibility
Metatools
MT.1 Designing for Emergence
MT.2 System of Action
MT.3 The Change Triangle 3.0
The tools in this book are about efficacy within a worldview
that sees things and actions as integrally coupled to their
contexts,and a worldview that frames contexts as complex
and dynamic systems of exchanges;material,social,or mental.
These exchanges can operate to sustain the health of contexts-as-systems.They
can do work that grows and evolves
contexts-as-systems.But they can also,of course,cause
harm.In this worldview,one must look beyond thingness,and
linear cause and effect.Things gone awry have a whole set
of forces—material,social,and mental forces—that need to
be unpacked if one wants to truly understand why events
occur.Some of these forces are obvious.They ride the surface.
Other forces operate as undercurrents that are harder to
discern.And none of them operate separately.To have agency
and efficacy,we need to look at things and actions as part
of contexts,and we need to look at contexts this same way.
96 Design Unbound
ThePragmatic
Imagination
97 The Pragmatic Imagination
Imagination is like a muscle.I found that the more I wrote,
the bigger it got.
—PJ Farmer⁴³
The tools of Design Unbound are tools worked by theDesign Unbound are tools worked by theDesign Unbound
imagination.Just as a mason works his tools in some kind of
conversation between eyes,muscles,and mind,these tools
require some kind of conversation between imagination as
inner“eyes,”imagination as mental muscle,and the pragmatic
mind.But whereas the mason’s eyes,muscles,mind,and tools
are used to build something new in a given site—a given
context—the tools of Design Unbound are intended to shapeDesign Unbound are intended to shapeDesign Unbound
contexts themselves through the entanglement of the imagination
and pragmatic action.
In chapter 19,we introduce the concept of the Pragmatic
Imagination—a wide range of mental image-making
activity that can be used for action,agency,and impact.
As a productive entanglement of imagination and action,
the Pragmatic Imagination is both catalyst and fuel for
the tools in this book.It is both parent and child of the entire
endeavor of Design Unbound.
Chapter 19 provides a framework for thinking about the
imagination as a crucial capacity for agency in a white
water world.It builds this framework by looking at what
the imagination is,how it functions—how it intersects with
the things we do,from the most ordinary to the extraordinary—and
how it might be put to pragmatic purpose,broadly
construed.Whether aimed at small or large invention;easy
or hard problems;personal enlightenment,development,
or joy;or the advancement of society;the imagination has a
special form of agency.
98 Design Unbound
Generally,the words pragmatic and practical are used synonymously
to refer to common sense conduct that is concerned
with ordinary activities and ordinary work.While this accurately
defines practical,it is insufficient for pragmatic.as both
a way of acting and a way of thinking,especially within the
textured framework provided by philosophical pragmatism.
The Pragmatic Imagination uses pragmatism’s framework
but stretches it into the realm of the imagination.To couple
imagination to action,the Pragmatic Imagination sets the
imagination in motion,scaffolds its emergence,and then
instrumentalizes its products to accomplish real world things.
The Pragmatic Imagination is a paradoxical concept.It is
after real-world impact,from small things that scale,to transformational
systems of action.It is meant to propel individual
and collective efforts to think and live differently.But,while
the imagination does not need to honor constraints,effectiveness
in the world must recognize and deeply understand
constraints in order to get things done.The power of the
Pragmatic Imagination lies in this paradox.
The twentieth century was the era of making things.The era
of industrialization created new ways of making things.New
products,industries,economic structures,a new societal form,
new cultural responses,and new identities emerged around
work that maximized scale,precision,and repeatability.
The twenty-first century must be the era of the imagination.
From things,to processes for making things,to contexts,
to ways of being as individuals and communities at multiple
scales,the Pragmatic Imagination is about imagining in order
to make or shape those things,the ways of making things,
contexts,and even ways of being.
99 The Pragmatic Imagination
While the classical pragmatists built on the natural sciences,
and for Dewey,in particular,that meant taking Darwin seriously,⁴⁴
the Pragmatic Imagination looks beyond Darwin and
the Darwinian worldview.Learning about our white water
world,and operating in it,calls for something beyond Darwin
and the natural sciences,beyond Newton and Newtonian
mechanics.In thinking from the perspective of material,social,
and mental ecologies,it is a whole new game.The third window
not only provides a new way to frame the world,but also
a new role for the imagination—an imagination entangled
with action and put to purpose.
100 Design Unbound
Endnotes
1 Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby,
Speculative Everything:Design,Fiction,
and Social Dreaming (Cambridge,MA:
MIT Press,2013),3.
2 Tim El-Hady,Aspen Institute
Communications and Society
Program’s Information Technology
roundtable,The Future of Work,August
4,2010.
3 John Rendon,Aspen Institute
Communications and Society
Program’s IT roundtable,The Future of
Work,August 4,2010.
4 Each year,the World Economic
Forum’s Risk Response Network
prepares a map of the“Global Risk
Landscape”to aid in selecting critical
topics of discussion for the WEF’s
annual meeting in Davos.Events of risk
are mapped in terms of their likelihood
Risk Landscape from World Economic Forum Global Risk Report 2017.
101 Endnotes
to occur,and their global impact if they
do.Risks are distributed into five categories:economic
(blue),environmental
(green),geopolitical (orange),societal
(red),and technological (purple).This
one was for 2012.
5 Yochai Benkler,The Wealth of
Networks:How Social Production
Transforms Markets and Freedom
(New Haven:Yale University Press,
2006),366.
Trend Interconnection Map from World Economic Forum Global Risk Report 2017.
102 Design Unbound
6 John Keane,“Monitory Democracy”
a paper prepared for the ESRC Seminar
Series,Emergent Publics,The Open
University,Milton Keynes,March 13–14,
2008.Monitory Democracy refers to
a new form of citizens’participation
and representation,“one that is defined
by the multiplication and dispersal of
many different power-monitorying and
power-contesting mechanisms,both
within the‘domestic’fields of government
and civil society and beyond,in
cross-border settings that were once
dominated by empires,states and
business organizations,”(3).
7 David Ronfeldt video,“TIMN in
20 minutes:social evolution—past,
present,and future”(at 7min 00
sec),https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=UBulH9_04vc.
8 David Ronfeldt,“What the Occupy
Protests Mean:A TIMN Interpretation
(Part I)”on D.Ronfeldt’s blog Visions
from Two Theories,October 21,
2011.http://twotheories.blogspot.
com/2011/10/what-occupy-protestsmean-timn.html.See
also:“Tribes,
Institutions,Markets,Networks:A
Framework about Societal Evolution”
(Santa Monica,CA:RAND Corporation,
1966).
9 “In time,we’re talking decades if
not centuries,a new form not only takes
hold,but an entire sector of activity
(if not a new realm of activity) is built
around it.”David Ronfeldt video,“TIMN
in 20 minutes:social evolution—past,
present,and future”(at 7min 30 sec).
10 D.R.Hofstadter,Gödel,Escher,
Bach:An Eternal Golden Braid (New
York:Basic Books,1979),312.And
as referenced in Melanie Mitchell,
Complexity:A Guided Tour (New York:
Oxford University Press,2009),ix.
See Mitchell for a well-articulated
introduction to the“vast territory
of complexity”for nonspecialists,
including the still unfolding history
of complex systems research.
11 René Descartes,A Discourse on
the Method, translated by Ian Maclean,
(Oxford:Oxford University Press,
1637/2006.),17.
12 Robert E.Ulanowicz,A Third
Window:Natural Life Beyond Newton
and Darwin (West Conshohocken,PA:
Templeton Press,2009),32–33.
13 Ibid.,39.
“To put a finer point on it,Darwinian
scenarios do not uncover how
radical indeterminacy and true noveltyradical indeterminacy and true noveltyradical
emerge.”(Ibid.) Much of this has to do
with his identification of what the“unit
of survival under natural selection”
was.“The unit which was believed to
be crucial and around which much
of the theory was set up was either
the breeding individual or the family
line or the subspecies or some similar
homogenous set of conspecifics.”
(Gregory Bateson,Steps to an Ecology
of Mind (Chicago:The University of
Chicago Press,1972),456–7.
Genetic biology attributed agency
to the micro-scale of genetic code.
The discovery of the DNA molecule by
Watson and Crick,and their description
of its structure and the way it encodes
information within,provided a view of
biological processes scripted from the
inside at the micro level.The idea of life
evolving out of instructions at the cellular
level pushed interest in the overall
103 Endnotes
system further into the background.
“Contemporary focus (was) upon the
correlation between specific genomes
and large-scale forms and behaviors,
as if efficient agencies resided (only)
in the molecular realm…all cause (was)
referred down the hierarchy of scale.”
(Ulanowicz,37–38.) So,while supporting
Darwin’s theories,it further reduced
the scale at which agency was thought
to operate,unfocusing interest in
larger systems and interdependencies
at all scales.
If agency for change lies mostly
at the gene level within a particular
breeding individual,or its family line,or
its subspecies,and if it is a gradual and
slow directional process in response to
environmental changes,then how does
one explain survival and/or adaptation
to fast quick bursts of change in the
environment (forest fires,for example),
or changes that affect large regions
of great diversity (global warming,
melting icecaps),or the complex
behavioral interdependencies between
species of vastly different genetic
lines—what we come to know as
ecosystems? And what explains the
rich and wonderful excesses of our
natural environment? Not all colors,
textures,smells,sounds,behaviors can
be attributed to optimization.
Instead of looking for agency by
decreasing the scale of variables—by
optimizing“down the hierarchy of
scale”to the gene level and holding
there—it seems important to look at
genes in relationship to their context.
The unit of agency,or survival,is not
in genetic code alone,nor is it at the
level of the individual organism/
species,as Darwinism would claim,
but is actually the relationships
of genetic code to organisms,to
organisms-of-different-types-intheir-environment—or
what we
call ecosystems.
14 Sandra D.Mitchell,Unsimple
Truths,Science,Complexity
and Policy (Chicago:University ofand Policy (Chicago:University ofand Policy
Chicago Press,2009),3.
15 Ulanowicz,back cover.
16 Interestingly,in the sciences,two
major discoveries in the twentieth
century disrupted the legacy of
Newtonian mechanics from the side of
physics,not biology.They set in motion
the embryonic development of the
field of dynamic systems theory,which
recognizes that evolution is dynamic
in a way that does not allow for predictive
outcomes.Werner Heisenberg’s
“uncertainty principle”(1927) in
quantum mechanics,and chaos
theory—the discovery that minute
difference in sets of initial conditions
can have tremendously different
effects in the subsequent motion of the
system—both acknowledge the critical
importance of contingency—that all
things depend upon other things.This
work set the stage for the aggregation
of work in the sciences from various
fields (from the study of ants,to
immune systems,the brain,economies,
and so on),which were all recognizing
the need to get at the nature of
complex systems.
17 Ulanowicz,5–6.
18 Melanie Mitchell,Complexity:
A Guided Tour (New York:Oxford
University Press,2009),4.
104 Design Unbound
19 Stuart A.Kauffman in Ulanowicz,
xv–xvi.
20 Ulanowicz,128–129.
21 Ibid.,7.
22 H.Ronald Pullman and Bart R.
Johnson,“Ecology’s New Paradigm:
What Does it Offer Designers and
Planners?”Ecological Thinking for
Design and Planning Education
(Washington,DC:Island Press,2001),
58–59.
“There is now considerable
evidence in favor of the Intermediate
Disturbance Hypothesis;this new
paradigm in ecology explicitly
recognizes disturbance as an integral
part of natural systems.A‘disturbance’
in this sense is defined as any relatively
discrete event in time that disrupts
ecosystem or community structure and
changes resource availability or the
physical environment.The extension of
this hypothesis to the landscape level
results in the view that the greatest
diversity occurs in landscapes large
enough to contain various serial or
successional stages as the result of
disturbance events in the past.”
23 A term used by both Bateson in
Steps to an Ecology of Mind and Félix
Guattari in The Three Ecologies (see
endnote 25).
24 Bateson,xxxii.
25 Félix Guattari,The Three
Ecologies, translated by Ian Pindar
and Paul Sutton,(London:Continuum
International,2000/Editions Galilée,
1989),29.
26 Bateson,xxiii.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.,466.
29 Ibid.,467.
30 Ibid.
31 Pindar and Sutton in Guattari,4.
32 In our interest in three ecologies as
philosophical registers for ecosystemic
design,we have borrowed certain concepts
and terminology from the work
of Félix Guattari,but with a loosening
of the explicit political directives of his
work so that we may use it as a more
open framework.
“The Earth is undergoing a
period of intense techno-scientific
transformations.If no remedy is found,
the ecological disequilibrium this has
generated will ultimately threaten the
continuation of life on the planet’s
surface.Alongside these upheavals,
human modes of life,both individual
and collective,are progressively
deteriorating…
Political groupings and executive
authorities appear to be totally
incapable of understanding the full
implications of these issues.Despite
having recently initiated a partial
realization of the most obvious dangers
that threaten the natural environment
of our societies,they are generally content
to simply tackle industrial pollution
(environmental) and then from a purely
technocratic perspective,whereas
only an ethico-political articulation—
which I call ecosophy—between theecosophy—between theecosophy
three ecological registers (the environment,social
relations,and human
105 Endnotes
subjectivity) would be likely to clarify
these questions.”(Guattari,19–20.)
33 Pindar and Sutton in Guattari,5.
34 Ibid.,2–3.
35 Manuel De Landa,A Thousand
Years of Nonlinear History (New York,
Swerve Editions,2000),17,273.
36 http://artofmanliness.
com/2009/02/17/12-essential-tools-
for-a-toolbox/.
37 http://www.techrepublic.com/
blog/10things/10-linux-and-open-
source-developer-tools-you-should-not-
overlook/579.
38 From Dave Snowden,founder
and chief scientific officer of
Cognitive Edge.
The diagrams are from a presentation
by ApJ to the Alliance For
Peacebuilding’s“Annual Conference,
May 2014:Exploring New Frontiers In
Peacebuilding”illustrate the relationship
of complex systems to order and
chaos,and the concept of working on
complex problems to shift them away
from chaos and toward order.
39 Dave Snowden with Mary E.Boone,
“A Leader’s Framework for Decision
Making,”in Harvard Business Review,
November 2007.
“Complexity is more a way of think-“Complexity is more a way of think-“Complexity is more a way of think
ing about the world than a new way of
working with mathematical models.
Over a century ago,Frederick Winslow
Taylor,the father of scientific management,revolutionized
leadership.
Today,advances in complexity science,
combined with knowledge from the
cognitive sciences,are transforming the
field once again.Complexity is poised
to help current and future leaders
make sense of advanced technology,
globalization,intricate markets,cultural
change,and much more.
Unlike in ordered systems (where
the system constrains the agents),
or chaotic systems (where there are
no constraints),in a complex system
the agents and the system constrain
one another,especially over time.This
means that we cannot forecast or
predict what will happen.
One of the early theories of
complexity is that complex phenomena
arise from simple rules.Consider the
rules for the flocking behavior of birds:
Fly to the center of the flock,match
speed,and avoid collision.This simple-rule
theory was applied to industrial
modeling and production early on,
and it promised much;but it did not
deliver in isolation.More recently,some
thinkers and practitioners have started
to argue that human complex systems
are very different from those in nature
and cannot be modeled in the same
ways because of human unpredictability
and intellect.Consider the following
ways in which humans are distinct from
other animals:
They have multiple identities and
can fluidly switch between them without
conscious thought.(For example,a
person can be a respected member of
the community as well as a terrorist.)
They make decisions based on past
patterns of success and failure,rather
than on logical,definable rules.
They can,in certain circumstances,
purposefully change the systems in
which they operate to equilibrium
states (think of a Six Sigma project) in
order to create predictable outcomes.”
106 Design Unbound
40 John Rendon,founder and CEO
of the Rendon Group;senior communications
consultant to the White
House and Department of Defense,in
conversation,March 4,2012.
41 Don Norman,keynote,“Can HCD
(Human Centered Design) Help with
Complex Sociotechnical Systems,”
RSD4 Relating Systems Thinking and
Design Conference,Banff,Canada,
2014.Norman’s keynote can be seen
here:https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=0UYh9ul3h28.
His list of what makes a complex
sociotechnical problem:
Lots of interdependent elements;
Nonlinear causal relations with
feedback systems;
Long and unpredictable latencies;
Multiple disciplines,frameworks
and perspectives;
Multiple incompatible constraints;
Dynamically changing operating
characteristics (systems and problems
change);
Multiple scales and sizes;
Many people and different
stakeholders.
42 In his 1959 article“The Science
of Muddling Through,”Public
Administration Review 19, no.2,79–88,
Yale University professor of economics
Charles E.Lindblom compares two
methods of public policy formulation:
the root method,in which decision mak-the root method,in which decision mak-the root method,in which decision mak
ing is formulated as a clear means-end
relationship where one can define ends
comprehensively,and with consensus
in advance of determining means;and
the branch method that employs a
“succession of incremental changes.”
He claims that,“for complex problems,
the first of these two approaches is of
course impossible”—that one can only
make progress in effective public policy
formulation by the branch method.
Lindblom claims that the root
method belongs to the theorists
who work toward comprehensive
overview of problems in order to create
generalizations and repeatability,but
this is only viable in stable systems.
The branch method,on the other hand,
is the practice of most public policy
administrators who“muddle through.”
For Lindblom,“muddling through”is
“indeed a method or system;it is not a
failure of method for which administrators
ought to apologize.”He describes
this system of successive limited
comparisons in great detail,comparing
it to the root method“because it is in
fact a common method of policy formulation
and is,for complex problems,
the principal reliance of administrators
as well as of other policy analysts.
And because it will be superior to
any other decision-making method
available for complex problems in
many circumstances,certainly superior
to a futile attempt at superhuman
comprehensiveness.”
But unlike our tool set,Lindblom’s
system proceeds in a chronological,
step-by-step manner.It is“a process
of successive approximation to
some desired objectives in which
what is desired itself continues to
change under reconsideration.”Each
decision is“only one step,one that
if successful can quickly be followed
by another.”It is a method of incremental
sequential change.
43 http://www.pjfarmer.com/
WRITTEN-ABOUT-interviews.html
107 Endnotes
44 “Dewey took philosophy to
be mired within a pre-Darwinian
worldview,one which divided sharply
between humanity and nature.In
its place,Dewey emphasizes the
continuities between them.Darwin’s
importance lies in calling into question
our self-image as spectators disinterestedly
looking upon the world,by
suggesting that we ought rather to see
ourselves as agents operating within
it.In place of the attempt to identify
a fixed framework for inquiry,the
pragmatists see inquiry as open-ended,
seeking to provide tools which will
enable us,as participants,to cope with
the world.”In Bacon,Pragmatism:An
Introduction (Cambridge,Polity Press,
2012), 4.
109
Acknowledgments
There are many who have contributed significant material
to this system of books.While most of them appear either
explicitly quoted or in our stories,there are others who have
contributed to the rich tapestry of ideas,actions,and insights
that we have been fortunate to have had around us.And
there are still others who have scaffolded our personal lives in
important ways,making this possible.
The idea for this book-become-system-of-books emerged as a
sequence of four events,and then a series of four writings that
wrestled with some of these ideas in their embryonic states.
First event:spring 2003,as a member of MIT President Chuck
Vest’s visiting committee charged with the biennial review of
the architecture department,John Seely Brown (JSB) decided
to go rogue,and instead of visiting the studio he was assigned,
he followed up on a presentation made by Ann PendletonJullian
(ApJ) of her studio,in which strategic games were being
used as a setup for expanding how one thinks about architecture
in complex contexts.Unaware to ApJ,he followed her into
her studio.JSB recounts this as a phase shift for him:“walking
into her studio and being exposed to her ideas and methods
in action meant‘game over’for me...this was a radically new
way.”This event was amplified by the second event,which was
when he became involved,peripherally,in the AUW project in
the spring of 2005.Chapter 14 talks about this involvement,
which had him delivering a letter to the Gates Foundation
that reframed the project in a manner that secured the
commitment of fifteen million dollars.The“phase shift”was in
understanding how one could—indeed,should—look at what
might appear to be a simple problem on the surface,from
multiple dimensions and at multiple scales to get at secondary
and tertiary influences,consequences,and even opportunities.
110
To see beyond the obvious.To not mistake complex for simple.
And to be able to radically reframe something in these terms.
These two events led to the beginning of a long series of conversations.In
one of these—the third event—JSB insisted that
the games studio work be written up.He would not back down
because he felt that the work,even in its pre-reflective form,
should be“out there.”ApJ,moderately peeved at his relentless
insistence,but also aware that the work would only benefit from
the kind of reflection that happens when one tries to explain
what one is doing,took the cue and wrote Games.4.Shanghai,
the first writing that tried out some of the ideas that would
become the practice of designing for emergence.
The fourth event:January 2008,JSB sent Libbrecht’s book,
The Snowflake,to ApJ,creating a“DUH?!”moment for her by
introducing emergent properties in nature to the emergent
properties of games.
Around the same time,ApJ’s paper,Ecotones,was written
(2009),then Four (+1) Studios (2010),and then JSB’s book
with Doug Thomas,New Culture of Learning (2011),in which
JSB unpacks his fascination with massively multiplayer online
games as social contexts for learning.ApJ assisted with the
design of New Culture.So,although it is unconventional,we
want to acknowledge each other for the profound impact we
have had on each other’s work and thinking over the years—
work that contributed to our evolution as individuals,and led to
the joint extended conversation that became Design Unbound.
Design Unbound was greatly influenced by case studies andDesign Unbound was greatly influenced by case studies andDesign Unbound
conversations with others who are wrestling with the world
Abreu and the Venezuelan Youth Orchestras | Design Unbound
111 Acknowledgments
we live in.Many of these individuals are found in quotes and
citations but these do not capture the full depth of their contributions,and
so we choose to expand our acknowledgments
to them in the chapters in which they appear.
Chapter 2,“Design Unbound,”could not have been written
without numerous conversations with David Ronfeldt,who
authored the TIMN framework.It is also indebted to Richard
P.O’Neill (RPON),instigator and director of the Highlands
Forum,an advanced-edge network of US government leaders,
the defense and intelligence communities,and partners from
industry,academia,government,journalism,the arts,and the
professions.This network and the Highlands Forum were
formed to engage in in-depth conversations that extend the
emerging concept of security,writ large.Dick’s Forum was of
invaluable influence in the writing of this book for the connections
it made,especially as ApJ had the extreme good fortune
to be part of the core group.JSB was one of its original members
and introduced ApJ to RPON.Many of the connections
in this book—or second- and third-order connections—
originated in a Forum meeting.These conversations and
connections,along with several Aspen Institute conferences
and roundtables,accelerated and amplified the spreading
into domains that were invaluable to the work by contributing
case studies and colleagues that mentored deep-dive learning
into their fields.We also want to acknowledge Dick and his
wife Deborah for their invaluable friendship.
Chapter 2 could also not have been written without the
intellectually vibrant and fearlessly exploratory,architectural
communities of Cornell University,MIT and OSU.Without the
students ApJ intersected with and the colleagues both ApJ
and JSB have worked with,the experimentation that led to
Design Unbound would probably not have emerged.
112
In addition to contributions around specific content,there
are those we wish to acknowledge relative to the emerging
process of writing of this book—its development,betterment,
support,and logistics of publication:Richard P.O’Neill for
having read each version of it,providing insight and fertile
ground for new connections and case studies through his
Leadership of the Highlands Forum;Jonathan Fanton who
read the penultimate version and served as interviewer for
the New York videotaped interview of us in Spring 2012;
Hope Matthiessen for her patient and critical editing of the
work,but,more than an editor,Hope was someone whose
exigent editing and critique made us better writers;Paul
Soulellis for ongoing critique,intellectual support,his design
of previous books,and friendship through the years;Geoffrey
Bowker for supporting the publication of this work as part
of his Infrastructures Series with MIT Press;and the editors
and staff at MIT Press who supported and saw through the
publication of the the full work..
While set in motion by a series of confluences,this book
is deeply influenced by experiences lived in contexts and
so origins and influences should be acknowledged.Living
principally in different domains,in different geographies,and
through different formative eras,origins and influences have
been different for each of us.Yet,there are clearly overlaps,
analogous experiences and resonant motivations.
Abreu and the Venezuelan Youth Orchestras | Design Unbound
113 Acknowledgments
ApJ,
Growing up in the suburban Midwest of the late Vietnam War
era,one of four siblings in a typical corporate American family,
but with an alien sensibility that preferred thunderstorms
and tornadoes to sunny days,the lure of the horizon over
the swimming pool in the backyard,and Nancy Drew and Ray
Bradbury over the Sunday comics—this,together with the
social,political and emotional conflicts and consequences
of the late Vietnam War was formational.Boredom and the
managing-by-avoidance of an undercurrent of conflict led to
making things—inventing projects in paper,wood,landscape
stuff,and a serious competition-winning foray into textile
arts—and lots of books,all of which created a rich foundational
context and set of dispositions.
But it was two professors at Wellesley College,Dr.Sarah Hill,
astronomer,and Dr.Phyllis Fleming,physics,that introduced
me to a different way of looking at the world through a
blended lens of metaphysics and physics.And they showed
me what passion in the pursuit of knowledge looked like.
While only pursuing astrophysics for three years,this was the
beginning of a life-long wrestling with both hard questions
and big systems that are full of unknowns and messy non-linear
causalities.
An interview with Carl Sagan led to my move to transfer to
Cornell University for astrophysics,where the professional
undergrad Architecture program became a dynamic attractor
impossible to resist.Colin Rowe,the influential British
architectural historian,theoretician and teacher,known for
his theoretical framework of contextualism,was a prominent
figure at Cornell at the time and he instilled in me a deep
appreciation for the imperative of context as both tangible
114
and intangible inputs for making things—linking culture
and other social systems with architecture—and that cities
are both memory and future projection.This was a very
discursive and formative moment in architectural education
and especially so at Cornell.The European modernism
of Le Corbusier and his contemporaries was bumping up
against emerging post-modernist architecture and theory,
and theory that informed practice was beginning to be
challenged by theory for theory’s sake;Cornell was one of
the universities at the epicenter of this.Beyond the invaluable
lessons of Rowe and my professors,‘growing up’creatively
in an environment of substantive discourse was an incomparably
formative experience.
At the same time,it was one of a very few professional
undergraduate architecture programs in the US,and it was
known for producing top architectural graduates with a deep
capacity for the craft of design as both a cultural production
and a grounded material practice.From astrophysics and Carl
Sagan to architecture and Colin Rowe,I have always been
aware of how much I am indebted to these years.
The fact that,a decade later,I designed two projects for Carl
Sagan and his wife is coincidental but not random.Unknown
to us,many other architects had submitted various design
concepts,but there was a resonance between Carl,his wife,
myself,and my husband and partner,Guillaume Jullian.In the
process of working with Carl and his wife,I had the fortune of
watching him interact as an activist with people like the Dalai
Lama,the EPA,the National Academy of Sciences,academic
colleagues,and many others in various fields,including Jodie
Foster when he convinced her to take the role of Dr.Arroway
in Contact.The importance of Carl Sagan as professor,client,
activist,inspiration,and friend,is immeasurable.
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115 Acknowledgments
Moving to two of the three most powerful longer standing
alliances,I need to acknowledge the irreplaceable and
immeasurable importance of Guillaume Jullian de la Fuente
in my life as partner,teacher,intellectual challenger,poet,
creator,and husband;and John Hejduk,mentor,advocate,
dear friend,whose work,way of being and passionate poetic
approach to life was not only an inspiration but a validation
of the value to be found in playing/wrestling with the ambiguous,uncertain
and messy things that drive the human spirit.
Guillaume Jullian de la Fuente,whose nom de bataille was
Jullian because the American students could not pronounce
Guillaume,is throughout this book.As chef d’Atelier for Le
Corbusier,he provided a unique perspective on both the work
and workings of L-C’s studio.As lead architect on The Hospital
of Venice project,all my learning about that came from
conversations with him and access to the hoard of original
drawings,documents and photos he collected. Born in
Valparaíso Chile,Jullian introduced me to South America and
ultimately to a large portion of the world.He was my teacher
around art and philosophy and most importantly,partner to
the adventure of life as both a mental and embedded experience.He
taught me that it was not about architecture but
about engaging the world as an architect.
Jullian also introduced me to the Institute of Architecture
of the Catholic University of Valparaíso,a unique multi-disciplinary
group of architects,engineers,artists,poets and
founders of the Open City Amereida,who used surrealist
methodologies to explore meaning and identity on the
South American continent through architecture,poetry and
sculpture.At the Catholic of Valparaíso,I want to especially
acknowledge co-founders Alberto Cruz and Godofredo
Iommi,who allowed me to be a fly on the wall for so many
years and to publish the first book that introduced them to the
116
world.Also,Juan Purcell and Manuel Casanueva who served
as intellectual and cultural guides over the years.
One of the most pervasive methods of the Valparaíso school
was the use of games,which became the spark for my first
studios that used games.Originally,merely a cool thing to
do to set the students’imagination in motion,games clearly
became the major means of exploring emergent behaviors in
a lab like setting.Three studios at Cornell,another 3 at MIT
and another 3 at OSU,I want to acknowledge my students for
their enthusiasm as I experimented with these methodologies.
In Chile,I also want to thank my friend and colleague,Rodrigo
Perez de Arce,architect,author,and professor at the Catholic
University in Santiago for his intellectual generosity and
friendship over the years.Sharing studios and thoughts and
projects,he helped me understand cities and settlements
that are more emergent than planned.His book on the hills
of Valparaíso was fundamental for my first understanding
of cities as emergent zones of both pragmatic and poetic,
material and social interaction.Roderigo has been more than
a colleague.He has been a friend and fellow traveler.
I need to acknowledge,also,the profound influence that MIT
had on me,both as a context and through my colleagues
there,especially former Dean Bill Mitchell,who supported
my work and gave me resources to begin what became
a fifteen-year adventure of jumping fences and building
relationships with people far outside my field,And former
Department Head,Stanford Anderson,whose intellectual
generosity and mentorship was as profound for me as it was
for an entire generation of PhD students and young faculty.I
was privileged to have traveled with him and his wife,Nancy
Royal,throughout China and to be able to consider them
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117 Acknowledgments
close friends.It was at MIT that I developed a polymathic
curiosity and had the opportunity,platform and warrant to
work at a multi-continental scale,creating studios that worked
on four continents.
And finally,relative to the architecture work,itself,in my
Cambridge studio,I need to acknowledge a small group of
individuals who worked on the projects that are relevant to
this book:Chris Genter and Ben Ku as collaborators on many
projects.Marie Law and Dan Adams as the most critical
collaborators on the AUW;Alexandros Tsamis and Lydia
Kallipoliti for their intellectual collaboration,especially around
the first games studios and a series of exhibits;and Neeraj
Bhatia,who helped teach my Shanghai games studio and then
produce the book Games.4.Shanghai.
I was introduced to Richard O’Neil and John Rendon by
JSB in 2005.Dick O’Neill as instigator and director of the
Highlands Forum,opened me up to cutting edge work in
multiple domains and has always challenged me to see how
things connect.I have had the extreme fortune to be part of
the core group,which provided me with the opportunity to
attend many forums—an extreme playground.Many of the
connections in this book,or second and third order connections,come
from these.Together with several Aspen Institute
conferences and roundtables,these accelerated and amplified
my intelligence around,and connections with,domains I
would not have touched otherwise.John Rendon is more than
important to this book because he is an action orchestrator
and influencer of extreme efficacy.John has taught me about
real on the ground agency in the world.Without him,the
meta-tools of Systems of Action and the Change Triangle
would not have evolved.But I also want to acknowledge Dick,
118
his wife Deborah,and John Rendon and his wife Sandy,for
what have become invaluable friendships.
And finally,those who have contributed to my development
within the field of complexity science and on the ground
action in complex on complex problems.Relative to the
knowledge side:Dave Snowden for helping me understand
how to categorize complex systems in a way that is useful
for working on them;Peter Ho,friend,colleague and Director
of Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Association and many
other influential agencies in Singapore—over the years,
I have had the opportunity to profit from Peter’s wisdom
and leadership as he both theorizes what,how and why and
then designs and acts to build Singapore’s future with this
epistemological,but action oriented,frame;Dave Krakauer,
President of SFI;numerous colleagues at the RAND corporation
and in the Pardee RAND Graduate School of Public
Policy,especially Rob Lempert,Susan Marquis,and Angela
O’Mahony;and the Systems Thinking and Design Research
Network,especially Dr.Alex Ryan.
There are three projects that served as fertile ground for
developing actionable work around and the leadership of
those projects needs to be acknowledged:Kamal Ahmad
for the AUW project:President Jack DeGioia—brilliant leader,
colleague and friend—for the University 2033;Elliott Shore,
both leader and friend,for the redesign of the Association of
Research Libraries (ARL):and Susan Marquis and the leadership
at PRGS for the work we are now doing with the RAND
corporation’s graduate school of public policy.
I have been especially fortunate that,over the years,most
of my colleagues have become close friends.There is
nothing more satisfying.Beyond those that I have already
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119 Acknowledgments
acknowledged as friends as well as colleagues,I also need
to acknowledge Marianne Jullian for her constant support
and love.With a maturity beyond her years and an irrepressible
playfulness,she has been a constant reminder of why
the future matters.And JSB,the third of my powerful longest
standing alliances;his support and devoted friendship/partnership
has both disrupted and enriched my life in the most
significant of ways.
JSB
As a kid growing up in Colgate’s college town of Hamilton,
New York,with my father,a physical chemistry professor,
I had ample opportunity to participate in my dad’s lab.
A kid among the seniors,I would hang out on the periphery,
listen and observe what they were doing,what they were
missing,and solve the problems they were working on in this
peripheral but cognitively immersed manner.My father,
Alfred Seely Brown,instilled in me this entrepreneurship of
learning through doing by providing a context in which the
problems I was confronted with were way out in front of
where I was in school.But also,working in‘grease shops’,judging
cows in the state fair,playing with electronics,getting my
ham radio license at 14,and becoming the youngest bookie at
the racetrack (where I learned that reading people was more
important than just being able to do the math in my head)—
these experiences meant that I learned early that reading
the world was critically important;and I began to appreciate
bricolage—using what was at hand to solve problems.
The University of Michigan in the 60’s provided another
extraordinary environment and access to people that
influenced me in significant ways.In those days,UMich was
120
all about crafting one’s own pathway.It was there that I was
first exposed to systems thinking and complexity science,
cross-linking everything from physical science to neural
science,computer science,logic and coding theory.From
the computer scientist,Bernie Galler,I discovered that for
true learning to take place one must often let go of the need
to understand everything at all times,or even where you are
going.Anatol Rapoport set the stage for my fascination with
how mathematical theory can be applied to social interaction
and policy.And he taught me about humility.And my friend
Chloe French,social activist and part Tlingit Indian,exposed
me to community based actions for social improvement
in the projects in South Chicago.It is there,that I came to
understand hard core pragmatic reasoning and gained a deep
appreciation of the power of street smarts.
Hired as a joint appointment between the schools of computer
science and social sciences at UC Irvine in the early
70’s afforded me exposure to hard core sociologists.It is there
that I met Jean Lave,who pioneered the theories of situated
learning and communities of practices,Brigitte Jordan,
anthropologist,and Harvey Sacks,the father of ethno-methodologies
that looked at the use of language in everyday life.
And then,I need to recognize the unique opportunity that
Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) afforded me both
as a lab researcher and then 15 years as Director.PARC was
legendary as a fertile ground for innovation and creativity—an
irrepressible environment and community of practices that
set out to re-invent the world and how we work with new
technologies.When I arrived at PARC,physicist,founder,and
then director George Pake instilled in us the mantra of build
what you but use what you build—a sense that the world
was a tool box.George Pake left an indelible influence on me.
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121 Acknowledgments
As Director,I had the license and warrant to bring in artists,
social scientists and most notably the anthropologists and
ethnographic researchers Lucy Suchman,Brigitte Jordan,and
Jack and Marilyn Whalen.These people had a huge influence
on my understanding of things like ethnography,ethno-methodologies,and
situated cognition.And Johan de Kleer who I
brought to PARC from my BBN days to help create the field of
qualitative reasoning by intelligent systems.Ron Kaplan who
introduced me to natural language processing by computer.
My interest in complexity science,begun at University of
Michigan,has been greatly augmented by my working
friendships with W.Brian Arthur,the economist credited with
influencing and describing the modern theory of increasing
returns,founder of the field of Complexity Economics,and
Nobel prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann,both pioneers
of the science of complexity and founding members
of the Santa Fe Institute in 1987.Conversations with Arthur
and Gell-Mann have fed my interest in the profound path
dependencies of non-linear systems especially in economic
and social systems.And John Holland who introduced me to
complex adaptive systems,genetic algorithms and machine
learning,decades before they became a more widely adapted
set of words and concepts.
Recent work has taken me deeper into organizational theory
and complexity.In this area,I need to acknowledge Wendell
Weeks,Chairman and CEO,and David Morse,Executive VP
and CTO,of Corning,and Jeff Bezos,as inspiring models of
leadership in highly competitive and rapidly changing technological
domains.
And then there are those that must be acknowledged for
providing me with an intellectual playground of consequence,
122
more generally.Colleagues,co-authors and friends in academia
include those at USC:Provost Michael Quick,Elizabeth
Daly,Mimi Ito,Scott Fisher,Holly Willis,Carl Kesselman,
Todd Richmond,Randall Hill,Krisztina Holly,Steve Anderson,
Colin Maclay,Doug Thomas,co-author of New Culture of
Learning,and Paul Duguid,my co-author for The Social Life of
Information—both Paul and The Social Life still shape much
of how I see the world.Others of significance who have,over
the years,shared intellectual concern for,and constructed
expansive approaches to learning,more broadly:Michael
Crow,President of Arizona State University,Dan Atkins,founding
director of University of Michigan’s School of Information,
Connie Yowell,founder of the Digital Media and Learning
Initiative (aka Connected Learning) at MacArthur Foundation,
Joi Ito,director of MIT’s Media Lab,dana boyd,founding director
of Data & Society at Microsoft Research,Jonathan Fanton,
former President of the MacArthur Foundation and current
director of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
Beth Noveck,Director of GovLab at New York University,and
Margaret Levi,Director of the Center for Advanced Studies
in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University for an
expanded appreciation of the role of the social sciences.
Additionally,Deloitte’s Center for the Edge and working with
John Hagel,co-author of The Power of Pull,and the Center
for the Edge Fellows has provided occasion for wrestling with
the 21st century.And Bill Janeway,who as both theorist and
practitioner in the domain of venture capital,has mentored
me for years on the dynamics of venture capital investments
and how theory and practice play off each other.His ability to
do this,to understand the deep currents of systems writ large,
and the value it creates has been a beacon for me.
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123 Acknowledgments
On a more personal note,I want to acknowledge,with
love and appreciation,my wife,Susan Haviland,whose
constant support has enabled me to live up to my title as
chief of confusion.And for introducing me to the unique
nature of architectural studios and charrettes in the late
70’s.Holding a PhD in cognitive science,Susan has also
challenged and helped me to see the wider implications of
my scientific training.
I also want to acknowledge the personal support of Jonathan
Taplin,whose own multi-faceted,multi-dispositional,path has
offered me entrepreneurial companionship;Peter Finkelstein,
who has scaffolded my personal reflection and been an
invaluable conversationalist around organizational dynamics;
assistant Carrie Howell who manages the confusion;and
devoted friend,inspiration and co-author,ApJ,better known to
me as TAA.
2018 by Ann Pendleton-Jullian
and John Seely Brown
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