Proceedings of the ECCS 2005 satellite workshop: embracing complexity in design - Paris 17 November 2005

Embracing complexity in design is one of the critical issues and challenges of the 21st century. As the realization grows that design activities and artefacts display properties associated with complex adaptive systems, so grows the need to use complexity concepts and methods to understand these properties and inform the design of better artifacts. It is a great challenge because complexity science represents an epistemological and methodological swift that promises a holistic approach in the understanding and operational support of design. But design is also a major contributor in complexity research. Design science is concerned with problems that are fundamental in the sciences in general and complexity sciences in particular. For instance, design has been perceived and studied as a ubiquitous activity inherent in every human activity, as the art of generating hypotheses, as a type of experiment, or as a creative co-evolutionary process. Design science and its established approaches and practices can be a great source for advancement and innovation in complexity science. These proceedings are the result of a workshop organized as part of the activities of a UK government AHRB/EPSRC funded research cluster called Embracing Complexity in Design (www.complexityanddesign.net) and the European Conference in Complex Systems (complexsystems.lri.fr). Embracing complexity in design is one of the critical issues and challenges of the 21st century. As the realization grows that design activities and artefacts display properties associated with complex adaptive systems, so grows the need to use complexity concepts and methods to understand these properties and inform the design of better artifacts. It is a great challenge because complexity science represents an epistemological and methodological swift that promises a holistic approach in the understanding and operational support of design. But design is also a major contributor in complexity research. Design science is concerned with problems that are fundamental in the sciences in general and complexity sciences in particular. For instance, design has been perceived and studied as a ubiquitous activity inherent in every human activity, as the art of generating hypotheses, as a type of experiment, or as a creative co-evolutionary process. Design science and its established approaches and practices can be a great source for advancement and innovation in complexity science. These proceedings are the result of a workshop organized as part of the activities of a UK government AHRB/EPSRC funded research cluster called Embracing Complexity in Design (www.complexityanddesign.net) and the European Conference in Complex Systems (complexsystems.lri.fr)

Making sense of assets: Community asset mapping and related approaches for cultivating capacities

This working paper critically reviews some main aspects from asset based approaches highlights key strengths and weaknesses for future research/development. Drawing on a large body of reports and relevant literature we draw on different theoretical traditions and critiques, as well as practices and processes embedded within a broad range of approaches including, widely acknowledged frameworks such Asset Based Community Development (ABCD), Appreciative Inquiry (AI), Sustainable Livelihood Approaches (SLA) and Community Capitals Framework (CCF). Although these are presented as distinct approaches, there is a sense of evolution through them and many of them overlap (in terms of both theories and methodologies). We also include emerging frameworks, including geographical, socio-spatial, visual and creative approaches, stemming from a number of projects within AHRC’s Connected Communities programme and additional collaborations

ICS Materials. Towards a re-Interpretation of material qualities through interactive, connected, and smart materials.

The domain of materials for design is changing under the influence of an increased technological advancement, miniaturization and democratization. Materials are becoming connected, augmented, computational, interactive, active, responsive, and dynamic. These are ICS Materials, an acronym that stands for Interactive, Connected and Smart. While labs around the world are experimenting with these new materials, there is the need to reflect on their potentials and impact on design. This paper is a first step in this direction: to interpret and describe the qualities of ICS materials, considering their experiential pattern, their expressive sensorial dimension, and their aesthetic of interaction. Through case studies, we analyse and classify these emerging ICS Materials and identified common characteristics, and challenges, e.g. the ability to change over time or their programmability by the designers and users. On that basis, we argue there is the need to reframe and redesign existing models to describe ICS materials, making their qualities emerge

An Integral Approach to the Modeling of Information Support for Local Sustainable DevelopmentExperiences of a Serbian Enabling Leadership Experiment

Collaborative strategic decision making has to be widely informed, communicated and knowledge-based in order to innovate transformations toward local and global sustainability. It is unimaginable that this process could be effective without computer-aided information support, but the research indicates the utilization constraints within human capacities to recognize their usability and usefulness. These constraints seem to be even more challenging within the intensively transitional social contexts, such as Serbia. We argue that understanding the relationships between sustainability, governance, and planning in a specific social context has profound importance to gain usefulness of information support and to ensure its increasing utilization. Identifying the practical path of information support modeling requires an operational framework that encompasses innovative and socially valid initiatives. Therefore, an integral theory framework was chosen to comprehend all social influences on the information support of successful utilization. This article presents the integral framework of the information support's conceptual setting, which was used to build up community-based collaborative action research (CBCAR) as a transformative social learning process that enables information support utilization, and it was tested in six municipalities of Serbia. The implementation of pilot territorial information support (TIS) initiatives resulted in continuous and proactive local community efforts in information support development and usage

From urban concept to urban engineering: The contribution of distributed collaborative design to the management of urban projects

International audienceThe complexity of urban systems is an increasingly common topic in academic literature. Following in the footsteps of the industrial sector, which has understood this issue for many years, urban engineering must also tackle the challenges created by complex systems. Industrial engineering has provided a number of responses to this challenge, including design technologies, which are notably collaborative. It seems possible, at least in theory, to transfer a number of best practice methods and adapt these to the conceptualization of urban development projects (in the initial phase) in order to encourage their global management (in terms of strategic decision making) and their social acceptability. The challenge is then to formulate new methodological models, as well as to create an environment dedicated to their application

Applications of Blockchain for the Governance of Integrated Project Delivery: A Crypto Commons Approach

This paper outlines why and how blockchain can digitally support and evolve the governance of collaborative project deliveries, such as integrated project deliveries (IPDs), to provide the foundation for novel and disruptive forms of organizational collaboration in the construction industry. Previous work has conceptualized IPDs as a common pool resource (CPR) scenario, where shared resources are collectively governed. Through the use of blockchain and smart contracts for trustworthy peer-to-peer transactions and execution logic, Ostrom's design principles can be digitally encoded to scale CPR scenarios. Building on the identified connections, the paper 1) synthesizes fourteen blockchain-based mechanisms to govern CPRs, 2) identifies twenty-two applications of these mechanisms to govern IPDs, and 3) introduces a conceptualization of the above relationships towards a holistic understanding of collaborative project deliveries on the crypto commons for novel collective organization of construction project delivery between both humans and machines