Thursday, January 16, 2025

What is "design"?

The design idea is essential for our class. 

So, what is design? 

Creating a plan or convention for constructing an object, system or measurable human interaction.

Design starts with a mark.

This is one of the first marks that we know of: a signature, early homo sapiens blows a reddish powder over his hand to leave his imprint on the cave's wall for posterity. As they aged, they kept coming back to it.  


These are formidable, monumental, massive marks. The pyramids in Egypt.


Which can be schematized as follows:


A modern mark? Take the famous Rietveld chair (I own one),


which started as a plan:



Or a Ferrari, a technological beauty (you can get this for just $350,000)


Here's the sketch: 




Or this gorgeous campanile, an example of a tower, which, of course,


started as a drawing/plan for an elevation. But even before the drawing, it was a mark in the mind of Bonanno Pisano.


How about this monster?

the ENIAC is the first digital computer, 1943


Now, you all carry it to class (as this lighter version):

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