A (Cybernetic) Musing: Design and Cybernetics

In 1969, Gordon Pask published a paper that explicitly proposed a vital connection between cybernetics and architecture. “The Architectural Relevance of Cybernetics” (Pask, 1969) was one outcome of an extraordinary series of debates and presentations centred around the theme of limits to science presented at the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA) in London. The proceedings were published in the journal Architectural Design, at the time one of the most open and experimental publications in the UK. I give these details to show how open the AA in particular, and architecture in general, were to other subjects. At the time, Pask had been on the staff of the AA as a consultant for several years. He not only argued the architectural relevance of cybernetics, he lived in an environment where this was accepted and acted upon. Pask’s central argument concerned conversation. Three years before he published officially on conversation theory, he explained how conversational exchange could help client and architect develop a proposal that became better than it would have been if simply briefed by initial instruction. Fourteen years later, Donald Schön (see Schön, 1983), a professor of planning at MIT with an interest in education and systems, examined the knowledge professionals develop and use in the practice of their professions. He referred to this as reflective practice. His insights were taken up by architects (one of the professions he examined) and other designers. He also examined the environment in which architects and designers are educated and work: the studio.2 Schön borrowed the idea of conversation (a reflexive conversation with the situation) to explain the central act of the designer: holding a conversation with oneself through paper and pencil. This was not a new insight: many teachers of architecture, including Pask and myself, were using this metaphor—a metaphor presented to me when I was a student (What is the drawing telling you?). So it can be seen there is reason for assuming a critical connection between cybernetics and architecture and design. I have alluded to such a relationship in these columns. I hold we can consider design as a practical expression of cybernetics, cybernetics as a theoretical study sustaining design. I have never presented the argument coherently in this column. I aim to make good this failing, here.