Diversifying environments through design

Abstract

This thesis studies the possibilities to diversify a human environment through means of design. Environmental diversity is primarily characterised through naming variables, as described in Chapter 3. Subsequently, an attempt is made to name their extreme values and – if possible – to identify an absolute value that may serve as a zero-point, from which the other values may have a determinable distance. However, many values that distinguish environments, at different levels of scale, are not quantifiable in this way, or even suitable to be positioned in a determined order. These variables, then, have an ordinal, or even only a verbal, character. Identified values may appear in a drawing as legend units. Drawings with the same legend may still differ through the distribution in space of every legend unit, including its quantity. The distribution in space is thus a second order of environmental diversity. If the legend describes the content of a drawing, the dispersion in space of a legend unit – including its quantity - is nothing other than its form. This second order diversity of form, as it is elaborated in Chapter 4, can be applied to every imaginable legend unit. Different environments within a room must be described through different values than those that are used to describe the different environments within a region. The variables, their values (i.e. content) and the dispersions of these values in space (i.e. form) are scale-sensitive. Therefore, this thesis distinguishes 12 levels of scale. Each level has its own variables and possibilities, in order to distribute their values in space. At every level of scale, the design means are different, and these differences are taken into account throughout the thesis. Similar forms may be stabilised differently, through different ‘structures’ (Chapter 5). Structure adds a third order of environmental diversity, which is superimposed upon the first and second order. This thesis refers to ‘structure’ as ‘the set of connections and separations that stabilise a form’. A structure is not always visible. At the lower levels of scale, ‘structure’ is commonly known as ‘construction’, but at the higher levels of scale, it contains ‘infrastructure’. Structure enables functioning. If a structure is ‘operational’, it can ‘perform’ different functions. Function is thus a fourth order of environmental diversity (Chapter 6). Chapter 7, then, studies the diversity of intentions that are possible with similar functions, as a fifth order of diversity. The sequence of content, form, structure, function and intention is not causal, but ‘conditional’, in the sense of ‘not being imaginable without’ the previous condition. A function is not imaginable without a structure, and a structure is not imaginable without (often tacitly) referring to a form. Conditional sequences are the main principle of this thesis. It distinguishes studying possibilities from studies concerning probabilities. This thesis is an attempt to play a language game that is different from empirical research: the language game of design (Chapter 1). Design does not cause a function, it conditions different possible functions, and serves different intentions. The methodological problems of such an enterprise are elaborated in Chapter 2.