Tools for navigating today's hyper-connected, rapidly changing, and radically contingent white water world.
Design Unbound presents a new tool set for having agency in the twenty-first century, in what the authors characterize as a white water world―rapidly changing, hyperconnected, and radically contingent. These are the tools of a new kind of practice that is the offspring of complexity science, which gives us a new lens through which to view the world as entangled and emerging, and architecture, which is about designing contexts. In such a practice, design, unbound from its material thingness, is set free to design contexts as complex systems.
In a world where causality is systemic, entangled, in flux, and often elusive, we cannot design for absolute outcomes. Instead, we need to design for emergence. Design Unbound not only makes this case through theory but also presents a set of tools to do so. With case studies that range from a new kind of university to organizational, and even societal, transformation, Design Unbound draws from a vast array of domains: architecture, science and technology, philosophy, cinema, music, literature and poetry, even the military. It is presented in five books, bound as two volumes. Different books within the larger system of books will resonate with different reading audiences, from architects to people reconceiving higher education to the public policy or defense and intelligence communities. The authors provide different entry points allowing readers to navigate their own pathways through the system of books.

Design Unbound: Designing for Emergence in a White Water World, Volume 1: Designing for Emergence (Infrastructures)

Politics & Social Sciences

Pendleton-Jullian, Ann M.

Brown, John Seely

Social Sciences

The MIT Press

Design Unbound: Designing for Emergence in a White Water World, Volume 2: Ecologies of Change (Infrastructures)

Foreword by Joseph Rykwert Several thousand miles south of the equator along the Pacific coast of South America, is the site of the Open City Amereida. It is a laboratory for thought and work, conceived and built by the faculty of architecture of the Catholic University of Valparaiso. Here architects, poets, artists, and engineers have been engaged in one of architectural education's most radical experiments for several decades. The school has long been a destination for those seeking an alternative to conventional academic practice and teaching. Now, its significance is being felt beyond the borders of Chile and South America. Ann Pendleton-Jullian tells the story of the Open City in Ritoque, Chile, a designed city still in formation that has no master plan, no imposed ordering devices, and no hierarchical networks of infrastructure. The strange buildings placed among dunes and grasslands reflect instead the mind's translation of urban phenomena and natural phenomena relative to the construction of memory, and a process of composition that is not dependent on stylistic precedents, drawing boards, or academic discourse. Teaching takes place on site and employs poetic methods to activate the design process; the endeavor is considered more important than the result. More than 100 photographs are included, capturing the mystical spirit of the place and of its architecture. Pendleton-Jullian discusses influences behind the Open City―the work and working methods of Surrealist French poets, the words and creative attitude of Le Corbusier, the heritage of the South American landscape and culture. Some of the more provocative issues that the work raises include the idea of "city" as it relates to human activity, to its physical reality, and to its intention; the premise of utopianism that rejects the foundations of utopia building; and issues of the sacred relative to the landscape in a modern context. Graham Foundation/MIT Press Series in Contemporary Architectural Discourse

Road that Is Not a Road and the Open City, Ritoque, Chile

Science & Math

Evolution

MIT Press]

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Books by Pendleton-Jullian, Ann M.