Internal Dialogue

(my design process, from thesis prep last term)

Why have I not been thinking about my design philosophy? This question came to my mind as I was trying to piece together an energy scheme research outline. What does any of what I have been doing have to do with how I understand what design is?
The grand irony is that I studies philosophy as an undergrad, and I ask why more than anyone would ever like to hear. Why, why, why have I been working on this project as if things like the proportions of the facade and the technology used in trading were the only things that mattered? To exacerbate the atrocity, my thesis professor Hajo has been taking over and over about design method and yet I had not managed to relate this conviction to my own need for an approach that is in keeping with my worldview.
I must have started to think of design as something I simply knew how to do (people often tell me that I am a good designer). Instead, I should have been looking at this project as a way to iron out my beliefs. To define what design means to me with conscious authority.
Thanks to Brent and Jon for bringing this question to my attention by selection books to present to the class that are heavily into contemporary design philosophy and how it relates to Science, history, etc. Brent talked yesterday about the Charles Jenks book The Architecture of the Jumping Universe, and Jon will present Manuel DeLanda’s A thousand Years of Nonlinear History on Friday (Jon also introduced me to an article by Mark C. Taylor called “Coevolutioary Disequilibrium”, which uses marketplace behavior as a metaphor for design evolution).
What is design to me? As an outside observer of my own work, one might think I consider it a process of trial and error, a groping for some inner light or beauty. Case in point this Blog, meandering about as if from volume alone will come forth some gem of wisdom or inspiration. The way I work is like how a blind person discovers an object with her hands. It is like the way I paint or do charcoal drawings, adding and subtracting in turns to find lines and tones.
So I know this much, the way I work is, to a certain extent, what it is. I have to understand it, however, to use it to my advantage.
What kind of things am I influenced by philosophically? What are the eyeglasses through which I squint out at this bright sunny world? My favorite philosophers have always been the American Pragmatists for their beliefs about the richness of experience and “if the shoe fits” theorizing. However, I also appreciate the Plato and the Pre-Socratics for their narrative, dialectical approach to idea formation. Perhaps I should revisit some of their ideas before I draw another stupid set of floor plans.