Design Methods Movement, 1944-1967

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 259-282).In the mythic construct of the West, nature, for a considerable era, has served as a seminal broker in basal underpinning discourse. This is despite nature's commutative, convertible and contradictory disclosures. As the antithesis of socio-culture, nature has been the arena of the given, of necessity and compulsion, and a zone of constraint. As "Nature" it has worked as the precipitate of humanity and ministered as the model for human activity. To violate the norms of nature, to be unnatural, has been considered unhealthy, amoral and illegal.Following the Second World War, constructs of nature, socio-culture and norms were altered in design education and practice. Postwar, an emerging discourse of computer-related technologies contributed to reconfiguring representations of architecture, engineering, product and urban planning in the US and UK. The collective driving these changes became known as the Design Methods movement. Together with trajectories of thought in psychology and psychiatry, discourses materializing from such fields as cybernetics, operations research, information theory and computers altered design processes and education.This dissertation ranges from examining the politics of funding surrounding an urban planning research center in Cambridge, Massachusetts to elucidating conferences concerning, architecture, engineering, urban planning and product design in the UK. Taking from media theorist Friedrich Kittler that technologically possible manipulations condition what can become a discourse, this dissertation is structured around two threads.(cont.) One thread concerns how computer-related technologies configured a re-conceptualization of nature and socio-culture in design practice and education. A second thread examines how psychology and psychoanalytic concerns were reworked for design through a lens of computer related technologies. A line between the natural and the normative is questioned concerning concepts of abnormality and deviation.by Alise Upitis.Ph.D

Links between social deprivation and harm to children: a study of parenting in social disadvantage

What is the nature of the links which may exist between social deprivation and harm to children? In seeking to shed light on the nature of these links this thesis will draw upon a study of parents' perceptions of the problems faced by them in bringing up children in neighbourhoods characterised by high scores on indices of social deprivation and high levels of child protection registrations. It will be demonstrated that parents facing social disadvantage encounter a range of adversities and hindrances which may have a cumulative adverse effect upon the care of children. The problems to which these lead will be shown to be linked by three main strands:- - social deprivation contributes to the existence of socially and economically impoverished neighbourhoods in which it is difficult for parents to provide a safe and healthy environment for children - by creating material, social, interpersonal and intrapersonal barriers in families, social deprivation can prevent parents from achieving the standards of parenting to which they might aspire and which society expects of them - in interaction with many other factors, social deprivation can contribute to high levels of psychosocial stress within families that may lead some parents to physically injure or neglect their children. In these ways the study will develop the argument that harm to children is linked to deficits in material resources and complex, interacting psychosocial stress factors. The study will be seen to have major implications for service-provision under the Children Act 1989 and promoting "partnership with parents"

Competing vulnerabilities in childhood cancer: the everyday lives of British Bangladeshi children with cancer.

PhDThis thesis presents a social study of childhood cancer treatment in a group of British Bangladeshi children living in one city in the United Kingdom. It draws on theoretical perspectives that see childhood as a social construction and children as active contributors to the social world, whilst acknowledging that their contributions are mediated by their dependence on adults. British Bangladeshi children represent a significant minority group whose cultural heritage may challenge the underlying assumptions of biomedical paediatric cancer care. An ethnographic study was undertaken to develop a detailed description of the social and cultural needs of this group of children. Fieldwork was conducted in home and clinical settings to provide an account of how day to day social relations for children, families and health care professionals are experienced. The analysis indicates that cancer service organisation, the dual language of families and clinical implications of the disease simultaneously contributed to the social impact of childhood cancer treatment on the daily lives of children. The data themes on childhood, cancer treatment and culture: language and power reveal that children, parents and professionals differentially constituted vulnerability in childhood cancer. Central to this thesis is the role of relationships between children, parents and professionals in the production of childhood cancer treatment including their ambiguous and borderline nature. I conclude that this produced a day to day reality of diminished power and agency for participants and led to children in particular occupying positions of liminality. This work challenges the assumption that membership of the social category of childhood has equivalent meaning to all social actors. It calls for further exploration of the taken for granted ideas of childhood during illness that professionals employ in their clinical practice from a perspective that acknowledges the structures that frame adult child relations and the context of care delivery

Levers and barriers to patient-centred care with school-age children living with long-term illness in multi-cultural settings: Type 1 diabetes as a case study

In response to the Children's National Service Framework and NHS modernisation agenda on the involvement of stakeholders, and to an important problem for children, families and clinicians in the local health economy, this study aims to understand and identify levers and barriers to patient-centred care in multi-cultural settings for children living with long-term illness. I carried out qualitative work with 17 children aged between 4 and 11 years-old being treated for type 1 diabetes in two clinics in East London. I synthesised findings from this with findings from 13 other studies of the experiences of school-age children living with type 1 diabetes or - in order to explore the generalisability of diabetes studies - children living with asthma. Findings suggest that, across illnesses and ethnicities, although school-age children share their health care, usually with mothers, their care is affected by their own experiences and understandings of the illness and regimen, the relative disruption these experiences cause across physical, social and emotional spheres, and the extent that these are exacerbated by their low social status - compounded especially in multi-cultural settings, by structures at meso- and macro-levels. Disruption to precious 'free' time and social identity are a particular concern for children. Key characteristics of patient-centred care are, therefore, engagement with school-age children's day-to-day experiences and understandings of their illness and care, and recognition of the extent to which decision-making is shared between children and adults in domestic settings. Barriers to the achievement of these include current medical and generational hierarchies, in particular their impact in the clinical encounter, and views of children which emphasise their developing competencies as adults-in-the-making as opposed to people in their own right. Unless these are tackled, technologies to ensure children have greater opportunity to set the agenda in clinical environments could become merely instruments for coercion and manipulation. To avoid this we need to disseminate new ways of thinking about children and childhood and better understandings of children's experiences of their health and health care. Particularly important are models of childhood from the social studies of children; and the 'evidence-based' paradigm where the key role of 'users' in the development of good services is recognised. Findings have implications for our understandings of not only generational inequality on children's experiences of long-term illness and care; but also of how adult views of children as 'becomings' make it difficult for adults to relinquish control over children's lives. Findings also include reflections on new approaches to the synthesis of qualitative data, and raise issues around the distinction of 'process' from 'findings' data, and undertaking qualitative synthesis as a sole researcher

Ensemble Stuff: The Grateful Dead's Development of Rock-based Improvisational Practice and its Religious Implications

This dissertation examines the Grateful Dead’s creation of a distinctively rock-oriented approach to open improvisation in the mid to late 1960s. In the first section of the dissertation, I draw on live recordings, presented diachronically, to examine how the band developed this approach to improvisation. In the second section, I address the issue of why they developed this approach; in so doing, I move from strictly musical to religious concerns in order to demonstrate the fundamentally spiritual impetus that drove the band to devise and devotedly practice such a radical approach to rock playing, in the process linking their religious motivations with similarly transcendence-focused aspirations of other radical improvisers of the 1960s

Meaning in life through children's eyes: the views and experiences of eight year old children in Israel

The study reported here originated in my therapeutic work with children at risk and my search for a therapeutic approach which would help them develop the inner strength to cope with their difficulties. The concept of ‘meaning in life’ as a source of strength has been extensively and richly studied among older age groups, both with respect to the different personal meanings which everyone finds in their life and with respect to the effect on one's life of possessing a sense of 'meaning in life', but it has been neglected almost entirely among children. As a result, the aim of this research was to further knowledge about the concept of 'meaning in life' for children. Due to the paucity of research with children regarding this issue, it was needed to first establish that meaning in life was at all a relevant and researchable concept for children. Consequently, the primary research questions were as follows: Does the concept of ‘meaning in life’ have relevance for children? Relatedly, what are the (dis)connections between children’s understandings of their own lives, and what matters to them, and, the adult concept of ‘meaning in life? To examine these over-arching questions, the following four sub-questions were devised: - What do children think are the most important and meaningful things in their lives? - What do children think is the best way to live life? - What nature of goals and purpose do children have for their lives and do they believe that they have character traits and strengths which would help them to fulfil their goals/purpose? - How do children's individuality and the differences between them show themselves in their perspectives on meaning in life? To what extent is gender associated with variations in response? The research adopted a Constructivist-Phenomenological approach, with the aim of getting as close as possible to the children's own perceptions and experience of their world. Thirty eight-year-old children in their third year at two primary schools in different neighbourhoods of the same central Israeli city were interviewed using semi-structured interviews. This data collection approach was complemented by two creative elements: a short semi-humorous story told at the start to set the tone of the interview, and a picture drawn at the end of the interview by the children to illustrate what was important in their life. Some interviews were carried out individually and some as a group. The data analysis method chosen was Smith's (1996) and Smith and Osborn's (2008) Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). This thesis makes two original contributions to knowledge. The first is the discovery that meaning in life is as pertinent a concept among children as it is among adults. Children may not understand the concept of 'meaning in life' in as full a way as an adult might, but they do have clear and well-shaped opinions about the most important things in their lives (e.g. family and friends) and how they should best live (e.g. by helping others and living in peace). They have goals and plans for the future (e.g. Ambitions to become a pilot or teacher) and they believe that they have traits and strengths that will help them in reaching their goals (e.g. that being wise, kind or curious will help them in life). The second important contribution is methodological: the research technics developed in this study (the semi-structured interview enriched by story-telling and picture-drawing) has provided what appears to be a reliable way of generating valid responses from the participants. It could be used by researchers in the future to further understanding about how children perceive the notion of meaning in life

The organic origin of food: the development of a scientific concept in children aged four to eight

Educators have discovered that adolescents commonly hold misconceptions in science which interfere with future learning and are difficult to eradicate. However, although early informal learning experiences have been suggested as the source of these ideas, the process by which young children develop both sound knowledge and misconceptions in science has not been elucidated. This research, which is exploratory in nature, is a study of the development of just one concept in young children in the hope that some apparently contradictory evidence can be reconciled. The empirical enquiry was conducted in two parts: 1. A cross-sectional design was employed with thirty children at each age of four, six, and eight. Semi-structured individual interviews probed children's knowledge of food-related factual items and their understanding that people depend upon plants either directly or indirectly for their food.2. A qualitative enquiry was engaged to discover the experiences of young children, both inside and outside school, which might contribute to their knowledge about the origin of food. Children’s responses indicate an increase in factual knowledge with age. Although this can be linked primarily to their practical experiences, video film and adult explanation rather than books played their part as well. The children themselves frequently mentioned family-based experiences as the source of their knowledge. There was no significant correlation between factual knowledge and understanding, indicating the possible existence of an intervening process linking the two. On many occasions the younger children made statements which could inadvertently mislead the questioner to underestimate the extent of their knowledge. However, early signs of a scientific misconception which is known to cause problems for adolescent learners were found. This was not the result of faulty information provided by adults and could easily be overlooked. Insight from recent developments in cognitive science can help both to explain these findings and also in the design of improved pedagogic strategies

Preliminary design of conventional and unconventional surface ships using a building block approach

Current naval ship design programmes are considered to be inadequately served by the preliminary ship design methodologies used to develop initial design features. This is due to a reliance on numerical design approaches that do not fully reflect the complex nature of the naval ship design problem. A new ''Building Block" design methodology is demonstrated. This methodology uses design descriptions integrating functional, and architectural issues with numerical design descriptions as functional Building Blocks. The Building Block methodology allows designers to undertake decision making during preliminary design with knowledge of all important design issues. The thesis scope includes all commonly encountered naval surface ship requirements for monohulls and also for unconventional hullform types, such as Trimaran. Justification for a new design methodology is presented in Part one of the thesis. General engineering design and specific naval design issues are detailed, leading to a discussion of current design methodologies. Comparison of alternative ship design methodologies highlights the need for an integrated approach based on architecture. The requirement for an architecturally centred design methodology leads to the Building Block design methodology, detailed in Part two. Major surface ship methodology issues are detailed. The concept of the design generator is developed as being that requirement which defines the section of the overall ship design space in which a final design will reside. The discussion considers the application of the new methodology to monohull ships, focusing on an Escort Frigate requirement. The methodology is also applied to amphibious landing ships and small naval vessels, demonstrating the effects of size and operational requirements on applicability. The discussion also demonstrates the application to unconventional craft by development of Trimaran and SWATH designs, noting that the more complex unconventional design problems encountered, benefited from the Building Block methodologies' strengths