Alejandro Aravena housing project
by Jose Guillermo Frontado, MArchAS’80
Co-President MITArchA
Design is an iterative process of discovery and ideation, of divergent (outside the box) and convergent (zooming and focusing) thinking, of defining goals and identifying constraints, of diagnosis and prognosis, by which something (a thing) is created.
It is a process with theory, knowledge and values. It can be a positivist rational problem solving process, or a constructionist process of reflection in action.
As an idea or as an object, the nature of such “something (a thing)” is the result of an endeavor resulting from a need or a want.
If it is a need, then the process will make emphasis on efficiency, stability, objectivity, and pertinence.
Oil Platform
If it is a want, then the process will make emphasis on transformation, aesthetics, and impertinence.
Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International
MIT design education has been a process of creating sensible solutions by means of a systematic questioning of conventional trends, with the intention of transforming a social or an operational situation while creating value and legitimacy.
In learning to work out wants. In learning to go beyond needs, lies the sense of professional and personal fulfillment we find while developing design solutions in many different areas or roles. And then and only then, we can address the challenge of making a better world.
From Wikipedia:
A need is dissatisfaction at a point of time and in a given context.[1] Needs are distinguished from wants …… the concept of "unmet need" arises in relation to needs in a social context, which are not being fulfilled.[2] ………. a need is something required for a safe, stable and healthy life……. a want is a desire, wish or aspiration…….the idea of want can be examined from many perspectives. In secular societies want might be considered similar to the emotion desire…