Rationality and meaning in design

Abstract

The author detects a growing popular reaction against rationality in design based on a number of misconceptions concerning the nature of rationality and its assumed role in the Modern Movement in architecture. The author argues that the forms of modern architecture and town planning are the product of aesthetic preferences, not of rational design. Consequently it is incorrect to conclude that the failings of the Modern Movement imply a failure of rationality as such. The author argues further that man's relation to his environment is primarily a ‘thinking’ relation and any approach to design which ignores this dimension is literally meaningless. Following Mead, the author links the uniquely human capacity for thought with the power of human language which enables man to ‘take the role of the other’ and so bring his own social experience into conscious awareness and critical control. The essential criteria for rational design are defined in these terms. The designer, through taking the attitudes of others involved in the social act of building, adjusts his own behaviour as a designer in the light of a critical awareness of the meaning his designs have for other persons. He becomes a self-conscious designer. The products of self-conscious, ie rational design, are significant symbols (in Mead's sense) in built form. Against Mead's criteria for rationality the products of the Modern Movement are revealed as wholly irrational. As example the author quotes Boudon's analysis of Le Corbusier's dwellings at Pessac and his description of the unintended responses of the residents to Le Corbusier's designs. The author concludes by arguing that in an age of social uncertainty efficacy of meaning may only be established in a rational process of design which facilitates the adjustment of design decisions according to the search for social communication.