Design Thinking

Design, according to Peter Rowe, is the fundamental means of inquiry by which architects and planners realize and give shape to ideas of buildings and public spaces; yet little sustained attention has been paid to the form of this intellectual activity. His book, Design Thinking, provides a general portrait of designing that characterizes its inherent qualities and sets it apart from other forms of inquiry. It treats multiple and often dissimilar theoretical positions-whether they prescribe forms that are deemed right for “good” architecture and urban design or simply provide procedures for solving problems-as particular manifestations of an underlying structure of inquiry common to all designing.
The book proceeds from detailed observations of designers in action to an examination of the broad frameworks that appear to shape design theory and inform design thinking. Rowe seeks to define the intellectual activity of designing both as rational inquiry, governed by guiding principles and constraints, and as a matter of the conviction and impulse by which design principles are invented and applied. Dozens of illustrations and a number of actual case studies support Rowe’s thesis.
Among the topics the book takes up are the salient features of design problems; procedural aspects of design, including varieties of heuristic reasoning; normative positions that shape design thinking; problems of substantiating design doctrines; and problems associated with meaningful interpretation from either a naturalistic or a self-referential view of architecture.

Contents

1. Designers in Action 
   Case Study 1: Making an Urban Place
   Case Study 2: Making a Building from a Formal Type
   Case Study 3: Reconciling Two Large Ideas
   Other Accounts
   Observations and Questions about the Protocols

1. Procedural Aspects of Design Thinking 
   Some General Characteristics of Design Problems
   Early Theoretical Positions
   Staged-Process Models of Problem Solving in Design
   The Information Processing Theory of Problem Solving
   Heuristic Reasoning and Design “Situations”
   Types of Rules and Constraints at Work in Design
   Aspects of Design Behavior
   Limitations of a Procedural View

1. Normative Positions That Guide Design Thinking 
   Normative Positions
   Surface Features and Broad Inclinations
   Further Differentiating Features
   Problems of Substantiation
   Theory and Practice

1. Architectural Positions and Their Realms of Inquiry 
   Two Realms of Inquiry
   Architecture from a Naturalistic Interpretation of Man and His World
   Architecture from a Referential Interpretation
   A Convergence of Issues

MIT Press, 1987