Kostas Terzidis
Graduate School of Design Harvard University
48 Quincy Street Cambridge MA 02138 USA
This paper traces back to the origin of design as a conceptual activity and its relationship to time. It is based on an alternative definition of design, that of schedio, (the Greek word for design) that instead of pointing towards the future to where design is supposed to be materialized, it strangely points backwards in time where primitive archetypes are forgotten and await to be discovered. This reversion follows a pre-Socratic philosophical position that claims that "nothing comes out of nothing and nothing disappears into nothing" indirectly negating the existence of novelty, innovation, or invention, concepts upon which modernism and technology are based. The issues discussed here provide a theoretical framework that will help to identify, clarify, and redefine the origin, process, and practice of modern design and its relationship with computation, graphics, and geometry.
Key words: Design, etymology, modernity
Traveling further back into the origin of the Greek word σχεδόν (pron. schedon) one may find that it is derived from the word έσχειν (pron. eschein)[2] which is the past tense of the word έχω (pron. echo) which in English means to have, hold, or possess. Translating the etymological context into English, it can be said that design is about something we once had, but have no longer. The past tense in the Greek language is referred to as indefinite (αόριστος) and, as such, it is about an event that did occur at an unspecified time in the past, hence it could have happened anytime between a fraction of a second and years ago. So, according to the Greeks, design is linked indirectly to a loss of possession and a search into an oblivious state of memory. This linguistic connection reveals an antithetical attitude towards design one that, in the Western culture at least, is about stepping into the future, a search for new entities, processes, and forms, frequently expressed by the terms novelty or innovation. Before adventuring any further into this Greek paradox, it may be useful to examine the notion of innovation and novelty within the context of design, and specifically architectural design.
If we look deeper into pre-Socratic philosophers such as Xenophanes, Parmenides, or Zeno, one of the common agreements between them was the assumption that nothing comes out of nothing and nothing disappears into nothing; nothing can just pop up or vanishes without a trace. Such an assumption is very important to understand their reluctance to conceive, accept, or understand the concept of novelty in its modern sense. If everything is indestructible then change is nothing but a transformation from one state into another; the appearance or disappearance of parts is only phenomenal; nothing is added or subtracted. Therefore, if something emergences, appears, or claims to be new, then it must be nothing but an illusion, because if it is not, then it would contradict the initial premise of preservation. Such logic, while it may appear to be simplistic or absolute, is also very powerful because it does not allow thoughts to be affected by sensory phenomena. What is most significant about this logic is that it sets a paradigm in which knowledge about reality is based upon reason and therefore strives to be truthful, while human opinion of appearance is based upon our senses, which are not only unreliable but also misleading[3]. According to this logic, design as a mental process of creation, can be seen as bounded by the limits of preservation: any newly conceived thought, process, or form is nothing but a reordering of previous ones. However, if we consider this possibility, then we are confronted with the problem of origin: as every "new" idea is depended on its previous one, then there must be an origin, a starting point, a root or roots out of which everything spurs, tangles, and multiplies offering glimpses of what appears occasionally to be "new". Hence, we are led to the conclusion that the origin, like its material counterpart, must be fixed, eternal, and indestructible. And since novelty involves the negation of existence (i.e. something that did not exist before), novelty is impossible. It is only a sensory illusion[4].
In English, the word existence is derived from the prefix ex- (i.e. forth) and the verb sistere, which in Latin means to cause to stand up or come to a stop. Thus, etymologically the meaning of the word existence can be associated with the action of appearance or arising. In Greek, the word existence is ύπαρξη which is derived from the prefix υπο- (hypo-) i.e. under, below, or beneath and the noun αρχή (arche) i.e. beginning, start, or origin[5]. Thus, similarly to design, existence is not only about the distant past, the beginning of things but also even further, as it involves a step beyond, below, or beneath the starting point. But how is that possible? How can something lay beyond the beginning? Wouldn’t that result in a new beginning which then should be displaced again ad infinitum? Such a train of thoughts may appear paradoxical because it is interpreted as a sequential linkage in the context of a beginning and an ending point. As established earlier, in the pre-Socratic spirit, the notion of a beginning must be rejected (as well as that of an end). Things exist before their phenomenal starting point and therefore the use of the prefix hypo- declares the framework, structure, or platform out of which starting points can be observed. Similar to a river, its origin is not the spring itself but rather lies far beyond, beneath, or below its phenomenal emergence.
It can be argued that “coolness”, fashion, style, the unapologetically fashionable, desirable, and ephemeral are not about the new but instead are deceptive obfuscating methods of establishing an authority on art, architecture, and design without offering the means to truly lead towards novelty. In contrast, theories, experiments, or technologies that point out the potential limits of the human mind, seek to identify novelty as a quality that exists beyond the limits of the human mind.
If there is novelty, in the existential sense, it must be sought beyond, below, or beneath its phenomenal appearances as an already existing entity that is out of human knowledge. Novelty therefore must be the result of discovery. While knowledge about the lack of existence is impossible, the lack of knowledge about existence is possible. In other words, the discovery of the existence of something is indeed new, as it pertains to the body of knowledge that it adds to. It is about the existence of something that was, until it was discovered, out of the set of human knowledge. Unlike mere compositional rearrangement of existing elements into seemingly new entities, a discovery is a revelation of something that existed before but was not known.
Discovery is the act of encountering, for the first time, something that already existed. In contrast, invention is defined as the act of causing something to exist by the use of ingenuity or imagination; it is an artificial human creation. Both discovery and invention are about the origin of ideas and their existence in the context of human understanding. These two intellectual mechanisms result from a logic, which tends to argue whether the existence of certain ideas, notions, or processes is one of the following: either a human creation or simply a glimpse of an already existing universe regardless of the presence of humans. The most paradigmatic example of this polemic is that of geometry itself: the existence of geometry can be regarded as either a descriptive revelation of properties, measurements, and relationships of existing forms or as an arbitrary, postulate-based mental structure that exists only in the human mind. For instance, Euclidean geometry was developed originally to measure distances on the surface of earth and yet, in Euclidean geometry, platonic primitive shapes, such as squares, circles, or triangles, do not exist per se in nature yet they represent idealized approximations of natural objects. Likewise, architecture can be regarded as either a simulation of the laws and structure of nature or as a world of fantasy and imagination[6].
The primitive, eternal, and universal nature of archetypes serves not only as a point of departure but also as a point of reference. Aldo Rossi refers to this nature as archaic, unexpressed, and analogical[7]. Yet, he also made a distinction between history and collective memory. As the relationship between form and function erodes over time there is a disjunction in meaning that results in a twist in the flow of history: where history ends, memory begins[8]. The form empty of meaning engulfs its own individuality and stands alone, away, orphaned, and rootless. Yet, it is then that remembrance becomes the only way back. Ironically, souvenir is about the act of remembering and yet, it is only by forgetting that one can see again things as they really are; the act of forgetting is not a submersion into oblivion but rather the erasure of false connections and the return back to the umbilical origin.
[1] Precisely, the root of σχεδόν (pron. schedon) is derived from έσχειν (pron. eschein), which is the past tense of the verb έχω (pron. eho), that is, to have. Therefore, design literally is about the reminiscence of a past possession at an indefinite state and at an uncertain time. Similarly, the word scheme, from the Greek σχήμα, means shape and is also derived from the root σχεδόν.
[2] εσχειν (pron. eschein) is also the root of the English word scheme.
[3] The Socratic analogy to shadows in a cave illustrates the illusion-prone nature of the senses and the inability to distinguish reality (light) from its representation (shadow). The feeling of sensory illusion is so comfortable that attempts to reveal their deceptive nature is met with fierce resistance (Republic, book VII). While in Plato’s dialogue Parmenides there is a clear distinction between the Socratic theory of ideas and Parmenides’ existential philosophy, both are in agreement on the deceptive nature of the senses.
[4] To paraphrase a paradox by Zeno, a student of Parmenides, it can be argued that novelty resembles an arrow moving forward in time and as a moving arrow either it is where it is or it is where it is not yet. If it is where it is, then it must be standing still, and if it is where it is not, then it can't be there; thus, it cannot change position. Of course, the paradox is just a symbolism of the inability to achieve something out of nothing, i.e. to create something new.
[5] Alternative versions of the word ύπαρξη (i.e. existence) in Greek are υπόσταση, which is equivalent to ex-sistere and το ωντι, which literally means, this which is. Όν (pron. on) which is the root of the word ontology, is the present participle of the verb ειμί (i.e. I am).
[6] Perault, the architect of the peristyle of the Louvre, argued that architecture is a fantastic art of pure invention. He asserted that architecture really exists in the mind of the designer and that there is no connection to the natural world. In addition, architecture as an imaginative art, obeys its own rules which are internal and personal to each designer, and that is why most creators are vaguely aware of the rules of nature and yet produce excellent pieces of art. A similar point is also argued by Giovanni Battista Vico. In his work The New Science (1744), Vico argues that one can know only by imagining. The twisting of language and meaning can lead one to discover new worlds of fantasy. He argued that one can know only what one makes. Only God can understand nature, because it is his creation. Humans, on the other hand, can understand civilization, because they made it. The world of civil society has certainly been made by men, and its principles are therefore to be found within the modification of our own human mind.
[7] See Rossi A. “An Analogical Architecture” in Architecture and Urbanism 56 (May 1976) Also in Nesbitt Kate (ed.) Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996, pp. 348-52.
[8] See Rossi A. The Architecture of the City. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984, p.