Drawing
Things Together
A. Telier
together denotes who is participating and how they are included.
We find this challenge utterly
relevant to contemporary design
practice and design thinking, and
have collectively (as A. Telier)
for a decade reflected upon how
to respond to such a challenge.
First as participants in Atelier, a
European research project focusing on designing and understanding digital tools and mixed-media
support for collaborative design
environments [ 2], then as the
collective writers of a book,
Design Things. In short, this is the
response we gave in that book [ 3].
March + April 2012
interactions
“Now, here is the challenge. In its
long history, design practices has
done a marvelous job at inventing
the practical skills to draw objects,
whether in architectural drawing,
mechanic blueprints, scale models,
or prototyping. But what has always
been missing from those marvelous drawings (designs in the literal
sense) are the controversies and
the many contradicting stakeholders that they bear with them. In
other words, you in design as well
as we in science and technology
studies may insist that objects are
always assemblies, ‘gatherings’ in
Heidegger’s meaning of the word,
or things and Dinge, and yet, 400
years after the invention of perspective drawing, 300 years after
projective geometry, 50 years after
the development of CAD computer
screens, we are still utterly unable
to draw together, to simulate, to
materialize, to approximate, to
scale model, what is a thing” [ 1].
This design challenge to draw
things together was put forward
by prominent social scientist and
philosopher Bruno Latour at the
Design History Society gathering in
Cornwall, U.K., in 2008.
There are three related
words in the challenge:
drawing, things, and together. Drawing
concerns the designerly skills
required, things involve what is
being opened up or created, and
Things? Socio-material Things
and Objects of Concern
Let’s start with the thing.
The etymology of the English
word thing reveals a journey from
meaning an assembly, which was
decided on beforehand to take
place at a certain time and at a
certain place to deal with certain
matters of concern to the com-
munity, to meaning an object, an
entity of matter. So, the term thing
goes back originally to the govern-
ing assemblies in ancient Nordic
and Germanic societies. These pre-
Christian things were assemblies,
rituals, and places where disputes
were solved and political decisions
made. It is a prerequisite for under-
standing this journey that if we live
in total agreement, we do not need
to gather to solve disputes, since
there are none. Instead, the need
for a common place, where conflicts
can be negotiated, is motivated by a
diversity of perspectives, concerns,
and interests.
