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The industrial age, mechanized and characterizedby the separation ( if we think at the assembly ideabehind our products or at the separation of know-ledge in the education), is leaving the way to newbalances between the society components accor-ding to their cultural parts.It is undeniable that the omnipresence and theconsequent computing integration is chancing thecondition of part of the humankind, that has a seriesof new parameters in order to build a new kind ofdesign theory.

The diffusion of the “digital industry”, that is to sayof the processes that use tools and equipmentcontrolled by computers in order to make objects,are completing the Alvin Toffler prosumer role(1970,1980), it basically continues the change alre-ady begun in the publishing industry with the blog,where the user have had the possibility to changerole from consumer to producer.

 We have recently started to make some trials inthe production of our custromized products, andthis process will increase as we will cut down thewalls between the idea of the product and the ma-

king of the product itself.

 This is very exciting side that refers to a real mate-rial digitalization (Gershenfeld, 2012), it retrace in aaway what happened from the analog communica-tion to the digital one.The fact that the production is leaving the institutio-nal places like companies and laboratories, beco-mes evident and sustainable (of course not in everycase) in the product design sequence.Recently we see also an opening of the architectu-re to these issues, by transfer ring open sourcethemes to the building world. For example the DUS

 Architects are working on a project of a 3D printedhouse, the interesting thing is not related only to thetechnical issue , but also to all those issues regar-

THE CHANGEABLE PLACES OF

THE DESIGN KNOWLEDGE.Text published in: Doppiozero, July 2013 

Mirko Daneluzzo 

ding the common problems of building:”... architectsare very fascinated by the mere technical opportu-nities that the machine offers, but we’re fascinatedmore by the open source democratic idea of theseprinters. It democratises architecture.”They describe the process as an experiment con-stantly growing, where the potential is the audienceinvolvement. The blog is a platform where the products are avai-lable in order to be freely tested or transformed bythe audience, that from observer becomes actor of

the experimental process.The system “simplification” allow to not-professionalfigures (in the architectural environment) to haveaccess to the system itself. The interesting point is this de-professionalizationwhere the reference loses the its meaning in favorof a common organization, represented by “contri-butors” and so governed by totally different dy-namics (Shirky) in comparison to the “bureaucraticmachines” that guarantee the knowledge preserva-tion or better to say of a certain kind of knowledge.

We can find a first step toward this transforma-

tion with the software at the beginning of the 80’s,these software have freed the designers of the linkto work with computer technicians ( graphic, designand modeling software) In the following years this transition has createdsome problems.

One of these problems is related to the professionalrole in the creative world, it makes people believethat competence is limited to the use of an instru-ment, forgetting the cultural aspect that is behindthis knowledge and the possibility to grow.

 At the same time it has contributed to shape thebehaviours and consequently the products.The software have partially become the knowledge

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The changeable places of the design knowledge - January 2013 

guardians, because specifically defining the activityfor which they have been designed, they determinealso the intellectual action. Nowadays many software have different tools,libraries that can increase the basic platform thathas become limiting.The creation of these extensions is the free expres-sion of a community where there are people thatact as pioneers, building a new aesthetic and fun-ctional language that is then supplied to the othersfor changes and adjustments.

The limit of the behavior control, is deduced also bythe apparently naïf experiences in the website, thealgorithm designed for this or that purpose are ourtypical experience in it: the website is an algorithmstank that give shape to our behavior.The control, that is the real structuring power ofthe algorithm website, is the result of two intrinsicelements that lies in its mathematic origins: they arecomplex negotiating system between Automationand Decision (Jackson, 2013).They are inseparable elements if you want thealgorithm to work no matter the purpose that isprogrammed for. The automation side refers to

the ability to transform a theoretical procedure in a“real” one. An algorithm has to be designed also in order todecide according to a particular input or accordingto a particular result, evaluating a series of differentalternatives. A good algorithm is a combination of both elemen-ts, where you automate the decision, as is it wasdone by the user itself, if for example the case is theone of a book research in an on-line store. We always have to remember that they are ab-stract structures (at least in their origins), they area reality representation and so they represent a

check tool of the reality perception.When this reducing reality view is compatible withour existence, it becomes reality, a reality where

there is obviously a loss of freedom, a reality thatis equivalent to the project ( that is for definition asimplification act ). A coherent target of this collective model is theskill to define its own abstractions by changing theother’s abstractions.The open tools, not the institutional ones (as forexample the software companies in the technicalfield or the school in the cultural one) allow to buildan actor who is able to define his own technicaltools and to share them with others in order to be

changed.But where is the cultural form located? Are we goingtoward a future where the technical language (theone of software) will absorb the cultural one (theone of intentions and aims)?

Toffler Alvin, Future Shock, 1970 Toffler Alvin, The third wave, 1980 Shirky Clay, TED talk http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shir-ky_on_institutions_versus_collaboration.html Gershenfeld Neil, How to make almost anything, in Foreign Affairs nov/dec 2012 http://www.furtherfield.org/features/algorithms-and-con-trol DUS architects - http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archi-

ve/2013-06/04/architecture-and-3d-printing Jackson Robert, Algorithms and Control - http://www.furtherfield.org/features/algorithms-and-control