What makes some design objects better than others? What is the unique property of good design objects, and how can this be conveyed as skills and knowledge in an education context? This is the point of departure for Anders Brix, a professor in the design department at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture in reflecting on the special form of tacit knowledge that may be present in the design discipline and/or design objects.

By Mads Nygaard Folkmann

Design is a discipline based on concrete practice. Often, both the execution of the trade and the design objects carry knowledge that is not necessarily theoretical and verbalised. As part of the design process, it is based on experience and thus often labelled tacit. The challenge lies in working out a way to speak about this unique form of knowledge that is embedded in the objects without compromising its unique character.

The chair as a type is a challenge with regard to form and construction. It poses a relatively restrictive task – there must be a back surface, a seat surface, and legs – yet it is always open to new approaches. In a high-density design solution, the result looks as if it could not have been designed in any other way. This is the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s chair for the Tugendhat House (1930) in Brno, the Czech Republic. Illustration: Knoll, Inc.

The Core of the Design Field
In design, Anders Brix points to a certain kind of density that good design objects contain.
“Some of the good works in the field of design have a density or a fullness that is closely tied to the sensory aspect,” says Anders Brix.
“This sensory density has a high information content of embedded knowledge and refers to a place that science often has difficulty capturing and describing. In that density of form and content, this is ‘a place of art’, and it’s a place that is also crucial to design.”

Design knowledge and skills, however, are not completely beyond the grasp of science.
“Scientific insights obviously play a key role for our interdisciplinary understanding of design,” Anders Brix adds. “On the other hand, one should not ignore the ‘poetic point’ in design, where one strives for a resonance and a truth that cannot be captured in any other medium.”

The Solidity of Design Objects Anders Brix has been developing on an analytical framework to try to narrow down the density of design objects.
“I’ve attempted to describe the solidity that characterises good design. Solidity in objects can be compared to solidity in scientific arguments,” says Anders Brix.

The concept of solidity makes it possible to point out key aspects of the structure of design objects.
“In a sense, a design object should reflect a logical relationship between the sensory material, the idea behind the design, and the design programme, i.e. the task that the design addresses,” says Anders Brix.
“The design process is a matter of responding to, interpreting and materialising the programme, and, in the process, applying the material to the idea.”

The chair continues to challenge new generations of designers. In Poul Kjærholm’s chair PK13 (1974), the uninterrupted construction of legs and armrests is to some extent a reflection of Mies van der Rohe’s Brno chair. But Kjærholm gives this approach his own expression by extending the steel construction into the back surface and highlighting the industrial element in the joint. The chair is based on strict requirements, which has enabled a new integrated solution with high design density and, thus, high knowledge content.

At the same time, it is essential that the resulting design is something ‘more’ than its individual components.
“The idea should not be an add-on to the design; it should be incorporated in the material. It’s this close relationship between the idea and the sensory aspect, which may at times be achieved in a glimpse, that constitutes the core of our discipline,” says Anders Brix.

Achieving High Information Value
Thus, to Anders Brix, solidity in design refers to a situation where the design is particularly dense, logically coherent and consistent. Only then can it carry the high information value that is more than the sum of its components. In a sense, the design is a finite entity that does not refer to anything outside itself; yet at the same time it contains a ‘more’ in the density of meaning.

This form of tacit knowledge in design is something that can be created. Anders Brix points to the importance of a critical dialogue in education and design research. “Achieving a ‘more’ in design requires an iterative sketching process, where one’s ideas and approaches to the design are tested experimentally through drawings and models. It’s very much this interaction between creation and critique that we apply as a method with the students in order to give them a deeper understanding of the field that they and we are working in,” says Anders Brix.

See Anders Brix’ article in Artifact: Anders Brix: "Solid Knowledge: Notes on the Nature of Knowledge Embedded in Designed Artefacts." In: Artifact , Volume 2, Issue 1, 2008, s. 36-40.

Mind Design #16, 2009