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Introduction The world of design is highly charged with the concepts of taste, a topic that raises concern

as we try to place our design profession on the pedestal of rationality and not on one that is

held solely to the whims of subjectivity. When discussing taste and material culture, both

domains that all designers engage with, the philosophical voice that must be heard is that of

Pierre Bourdieu. Taste is “the basis of all that one has — people and things — and all that

one has for others.” 1 It is this dialogue between the dynamic nature of life and the static

potentiality of matter and material that drives design. Designers have to deal with those that

use their designs and the accompanying body, together with all its demands of psychological

and sociological drivers. When it comes to the design of interior space, the discipline

encompasses cognition of many factors such as site conditions, functional and behavioural

relationships, structural form, symbolic meaning, and sensory responses. Peter Zumthor

perhaps describes this dialogue most eloquently when he states, “All design work starts from

the premise of this physical, objective sensuousness of architecture, of its materials. To

experience architecture in a concrete way means to touch, see, hear, and smell it.” 2 He also

discusses the design process as one that:

…is based on a constant interplay of feeling and reason. The feelings,

preferences, longings, and desires that emerge and demand to be given

a form must be controlled by critical powers of reasoning, but it is our

feelings that tell us whether abstract consideration really ring true. 3

However, this paper is not on the exploration of taste, nor on the work of Peter Zumthor, but

about the design process and the relationship to innovation and new materiality.

                                                                                                               1. Pierre Bourdieu, A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 1984), 56. 2. Peter Zumthor, Thinking Architecture (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2006), 66. 3. Zumthor, 21.  

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Many authors have written about the design process, some particular to a discipline while

others not. And recently, Bryan Lawson added to the bank of ideas by unwrapping notions of

design thinking across disciplines. In an earlier book, Design in Mind, Lawson studies

various designers and their own processes in design. It is here that Eva Jiricna describes how

she moves from the micro to the macro scale and back again. It is also here that she

proclaims: “… to me the material really is the starting point of the story.” 4 These thoughts

established the catalyst towards the development of the methodology presented in this paper.

Innovation and Design

We are living in a highly dynamic and demanding world. It is driven by global demands to

act more sustainably, to be more innovative yet financially accountable, and also to still

provide meaning in what we do as designers to those that use our designs. These are all

pertinent issues to all designers, but beyond the scope of this paper. However, what can be

the focus, and what was clearly the focus of the methodology project described below, is the

discipline of interior design and its relationship to meaning and innovation. In dealing with

design methodology we aim at taking the factors presented to us from the brief and /or design

problem and through the process of abstraction we refine the elements and rearrange matter

to the appropriate form to resolve an outcome. It is the development of outcomes that become

problematic for most students of design, as they tend not look widely at other possibilities

and are often driven by latest stylistic trends instead of developing really innovative and

creative solutions. Perhaps bad time management has a part to play in their actions, but it

may also be the lack of a process of ideation towards permutations in outcomes. Sadly, the

professional world of design also has practitioners that fall into familiar habits.

                                                                                                               4. Eva Jiricna quoted in Bryan Lawson, Design in Mind (Oxford: Butterworth Architecture, 1994), 52.

 

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What will be presented is a methodology initiated in the world of industrial design, but

transferred and amended into a workable methodology useful in educating interior design

students, and also transferable to practice. It is also a method that begins with materiality.

If we start with the premise that “An architectural enclosure captures a volume of material

matter within a spatial condition that is called an interior” 5 and we build into this that

material, although being inert, when handled by a designer provides a potential source of

meaning. We are now dealing with trans-disciplinary ideas between what designers have

always dealt with and what business experts are now considering when discussing

innovation. With the world of design and the world of business inherently linked designers

are often called upon to provide economic advantage or market profile for a client.

Definitions of innovation that currently prevail clearly link innovative actions with economic

benefit are therefore aligned with design. And of course, ‘creative thinking’ is being hailed

by most, discussing innovation as a core driver in economic development.6

Ilkka Tuomi discussed the ideas of user-centred innovation in his book Networks of

Innovation, and although the latter part of the book deals with innovation occurring in the

world of information technology and the internet, there is much to be learnt from his

dismantling of the notions of heroic innovation modelling. It is here that he describes

“Innovation does not happen ‘out there’ in the world of objects, but in society and in the

minds. More particularly, it happens in the minds of the users, which are intrinsically

                                                                                                               5. George Verghese, “Sensual Spaces Through Material Abstraction”. In Thinking inside the box – A reader in

interiors for the 21st century, eds. John Gigi, Frazer et al (London: Middlesex University Press, 2007) 197.  6. Roberto Verganti, Design-Driven Innovation – Changing the rules of competition by radically innovation what

things mean (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2009), x.  

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integrated with the activities of the users”. 7 Of course designers have, for a long time,

recognised the need for co-operative design processes and engagement with the users.

Materiality within an interior sits within a nexus of the site context and the body. The user

who dominates the analysis of the program of use is not an abstract entity, but predominately

a human being who relates to the concrete conditions of their world — a material world that

is in constant flux and demands innovation.

Tuomi differentiates between the traditional view of innovation and that of the user-centred

view when he describes the former as one that is “…represented by the material object that

imbeds the invention”, and the latter is different as “[i]nsted of material it focuses on

mental”.8 However, much of material technology development into advanced materials today

is driven not by its inventiveness, but by its innovative and design sensibilities, and this is

innovation in a more socially networked manner. The relationship and differences between

these terms become important to briefly discuss here. Where David Pye talks about the

differences between invention and design as being, “[i]nvention is the process of discovering

a principle. Design is the process of applying that principle”. 9 Tuomi, looking from a user-

centric innovation stance claims:

Invention has generally been understood as it was described in the

popular accounts, as a process of creative insight and heroic efforts in

problem-solving. Innovation, in contrast, has been defined as a process

that refines inventions and translates them into useable products.10

                                                                                                               7. Ilkka Toumi, Networks of Innovation –Change and Meaning in the Age of the Internet (New York: Oxford

University Press, 2002), 5. 8. Toumi, 13. 9. David Pye, The Nature and Aesthetics of Design (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1978), 21.    10. Toumi, 8.  

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Designers are change agents, as we are charged with the task to encourage and direct change.

Design deals with the responsibility of releasing or reducing tensions in the network of social

practices. These social practices ultimately involve the user and their relationship with

materials. Materiality becomes the driver for a user-centred view of innovation.

Advanced materials today are not just the product of invention, albeit technical advances are

clearly evident. Rather they are products of a user-centric innovation exploration that

projects engagement with new materials which aid phenomenological enhancement of our

sensual sense of space. Toshiko Mori discusses the idea of the relationship of sensory

engagement and material innovation as “We predict that the development of innovative

materials must take place in parallel with new approaches to engaging human senses.” 11

The frameworks discussed so far deal with how innovation is seen in the larger contexts of

world of business and social interactions, together with other frames that are on the threshold

of context and the body which are explored in materiality and spatial design. However it is

the focusing down towards exploring principles and acting on them that is important to note

here. Examining all of these theoretical frameworks that ground the methodological approach

to be demonstrated, the notions of playfulness as being an essential part of any design process

and its inherent exploration of principles, is best captured by Illka Tuomi when he states:

Innovation, therefore, is not necessarily generated only by tensions in

social systems; instead, it also has an independent counterpart in

individual playfulness and the joy of exceeding the given limits of the

                                                                                                               11. Toshiko Mori, Immaterial Ultramaterial – Architecture, design, and materials (New York: George Braziller

Publisher, 2002), 63.    

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possible. Indeed, individual creativity often drives change in social

practices and also creates tensions in the process.12

Design methodology for innovation

Quite clearly it is the application of new materials into the design process that constitutes a

new era in design, and not solely the development of new material technology. 13As a design

educator we are charged with the responsibility to engage our students with new ways of

looking at the world, to not just produce what has been produced but to recognise patterns

and factors that affect positive change. The aim of the methodology developed that I will now

describe was to allow the seed of an idea to quickly flourish within a strict system, but with

initial investigation starting with the material.

This methodological model has been prototyped at undergraduate level for the last six years

at universities in Australia and Thailand, and with successive iterations new aspects emerged.

This paper will describe the method and potential developments that came out of the most

recent results. The project was entitled Exploration of Form Through Joining Paradigms. It

aimed to engage the students and encourage them to take thoughtful risks in a systematic

manner by analysis of precedents/paradigms that looked at the micro aspects of the design

world: detail joining of parts. It is this novel approach of starting at the micro level and

moving to the macro that proved most fascinating to students. At the end of the project they

had developed their observational skills and understood that inspiration for form can be found

all around us and not just from the standard precedents from the built environment.

                                                                                                               12. Toumi, 25.  13. Verghese, 199.  

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As an overview, Figure 1 describes the four main stages of the method entitled Exploration of

Form through Systematic Variation (EFTSV). Initially a new material is selected that could

trigger the form-making in a more meaningful manner as the selected form could align with

the sensual qualities of the new material. The material choice could be amended at a later

stage. Warren Wake’s Design Paradigms of Joining was then used as a technique for an

exploration. This forms the second step, but as will be noted later, other diagrammatic

functional relationships could be used at this point. The joining paradigm was then

investigated in a systematic manner through the adaptation of Eskild Tjalve’s exploration of

product form. Lateral thinking approaches led these outcomes towards a multitude of options

for new spatial outcomes not initially envisaged. At the end of this systematic investigation

an outcome is selected to develop further. The selection criteria are the appropriateness of the

properties of the original new material chosen initially and its ability to give meaning to the

spatial experience.

Previously, as spatial designers, the students had only worked with spatial design processes to

generate ideas. They were looking at the problem with the same lens that the problem had

always been viewed upon. The Exploration of Form through Systematic Variation (EFTSV)

methodology had its origins in industrial design, but has been amended to look at space as

contained volumetric entities. The dislodging of the students into a new framework allowed

them to rid themselves of preconceived ideas of what a form should look like. An attempt

was made to take the students on a path from abstract ideas towards ideas for an innovative

and habitable space. The projects were all successful particularly for those students who

really pushed the system in a methodical manner.

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Prior to the briefing of this project the students had been provided with detailed information

on a selection of new advanced materials. Selecting a material that had certain physical

properties (i.e. planer, or flexible) allowed the students to appropriately choose a joining

paradigm. It is here that the first connection to an industrial design framework of ideas is

evident. Warren Wake’s book Design Paradigms—A Sourcebook for Creative Visualisation

provides numerous paradigmatic models for designers to use in an ideation process regardless

of their discipline. However, perhaps slightly more biased towards spatial designers,

particularly industrial designers, a chapter that became critical was the one on Joining

Paradigms. He defines the term, “…joining paradigm as firmly connecting parts, each of

which is prepared or designed to accommodate the joint with the other.14 The paradigms that

were used are: dovetail, plug & socket, ball & socket, universal joint, pin joint, fasteners,

zipper, sewing, hook and loop (noted by Wake as the brand name Velcro®), weld, knot, and

bridge. Running this project recently led me to remove the paradigms of weld and bridge

from the choice block as it proved to be too problematic for the junior students. However,

when senior students they were asked to investigate their site, they generated a visual map

from which they would choose a joining paradigm most prevalent on the site or in the context

of the site. Generally the selection of the joining paradigm was the simplest task for the

student.

The next part of the methodology utilised by the students is the most taxing and forms the

core of the systematic investigation. They were asked to examine the joining paradigm

through exploratory studies of drawing and models. The system that they must use is one that

was extrapolated from one by Eskild Tjalve. Tjalve was a Danish industrial design engineer

who proposed a systematic model for exploring form in his book A Short Course in

                                                                                                               14. Warren Wake. Design Paradigms – A sourcebook for creative visualizatioon (New York: John Wiley & Sons,

2000), 153.      

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Industrial Design. In his book he explores quantified structures and variations in these

structures together with functional surfaces in which he defines as: “… surfaces are the basis

of the form design of any product”.15 It is this method of form variation that the EFTSV

method is derived. Tjalve outlines through numerous examples how form can be varied if you

look systematically at: number, arrangement, form geometry, and dimension.

The EFTSV design method of systematic permutations allowed the students to realise form

variations that ordinarily they would have not discovered as their normal methodology lacked

breadth. It was also very evident that once they started they saw that this morphological

approach could also be limitless. During the critiques it was suggested that the students start

to tabulate their results in a matrix. (See Figure 2).

This stage of the EFTSV process consisted of identifying the key elements of the joint

paradigm and then methodically exploring each by separately varying them by the number,

dimension, form geometry, and the arrangement. (See Figure 3) The order that the variation

occurs is not important. For each variation of an element I asked the students to generate at

least three or four versions. Then they were asked to investigate combinations of variations.

At times the boundary of what is considered a variation in number or dimension quickly

became confused with a form variation. It is here that the intention of the variation becomes

the determining factor and as a consequence the form will alter. In fact it becomes obvious

that the form will alter for all variations. Therefore when considering form variation, it must

be of the extreme nature. For instance, if you are looking at knot paradigm, the geometry of

the cross-section of the cord would change from something that could start out as circular to

                                                                                                               15. Eskild Taljve. A Short Course in Industrial Design (London: Newnes-Butterworths, 1979), 48.        

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something flat. In fact, the sewing paradigm (See Figure 4) best illustrates the simplicity of

the system to create a multitude of results.

When the students have explored the variations thoroughly, they are then asked to select one

that has potential for an exciting engagement of form. The model of the variation are then

converted to a larger scale with the elements that were cords or pivots are now considered

negative spaces to move within, or positive spaces to move around and define space. Here the

catalyst of micro to macro that Eva Jiricna mentioned is extended into the design process of

form variation. Simultaneously to increasing the scale, the students also revisit the selected

new material and work in a collaborative manner with both ideas therefore exploring the

continuum of material, form and space. The outcomes then take on richer poetic form (See

Figure 5) and not derived from the usual precedents. This ultimately gives the student or

designer a broader approach for inspirational catalysts to design, rather than the overused

architectural precedents or natural forms.

Conclusion

Initiating from a joining paradigm the final results explore micro spatial arrangements giving

life to macro spatial arrangements. These efforts to push the boundaries of spatial thinking

and form-making are then balanced with consideration of functions that could go into the

space. Despite this project having the educational objective of developing lateral thinking and

visualisation skills for design students, it can also be used in practice. The EFTSV method

can substitute the joining paradigm with a functional adjacency drawing (See Figure 3). Here

the spatial volumes can be manipulated as each space is considered as an element in the

process described above. Figure 4 illustrates how this could work whilst also

diagrammatically illustrating how Taljve’s system has been altered to express a new rational,

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yet playful system for designers to utilise. The EFTSV provides a design methodology for

creative investigation and ideation that is balanced by the understanding of materiality and

the user. This user-centric innovative approach to design ideation and materiality are aligned

with thoughts put forward by Tuomi, Zumthor, and Mori. This could only lead to greater

freedom and creativity fostered in the design process.

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Acknowledgements I wish to acknowledge the School of Design at UTS and the interior design staff who taught

the new materiality subjects. Particularly the second year students at UTS and at the Uni of

SA Interior Architecture Masterclass of 2007, together with the final year students in 2008 at

KMUTT in Thailand.

Bibliographic References

Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London:

Routledge, 1984.

Lawson, Bryan. Design in Mind. Oxford: Butterworth Architecture, 1994.

Mori, Toshiko. Immaterial Ultramaterial – Architecture, design, and materials. New York:

George Braziller Publisher, 2002.

Pye, David. The Nature and Aesthetics of Design. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1978.

Taljve, Eskild. A Short Course in Industrial Design. London: Newnes-Butterworths, 1979

Toumi, Ilkka, Networks of Innovation –Change and Meaning in the Age of the Internet. New

York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Verganti, Roberto. Design-Driven Innovation – Changing the rules of competition by

radically innovation what things mean. Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2009.

Verghese, George. “Sensual Spaces Through Material Abstraction”. In Thinking Inside the

Box – A reader in interiors for the 21st century, edited by John Gigi, Frazer Hay, Ed

Hollis, Andrew Milligan, Alex Milton, and Drew Plunket, 197-206. London:

Middlesex University Press, 2007.

Wake, Warren. Design Paradigms – A sourcebook for creative visualization. New York:

John Wiley & Sons, 2000.

Zumthor, Peter. Thinking Architecture. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2006

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Figure 1: Diagram of EFTSV methodology

Figure 2: Matrix of Variations by Emily Thrum, 2009

Select a new material

Select a joining paradigm

Select one outcome that responds to the new material choice and develop an interior with meaning & function.

Systematic variations: • number • form-geometry • dimension • arrangement

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Figure 3: The EFTSV method showing structured variations and combinations

Basic  Unit   Variation  by  Number  

Variation  by  Arrangement   Variation  by  Arrangement  

Variation  by  Dimension   Variation  by  Dimension  

Variation  by  Form  Geometry   Combination  of  Variations    

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Figure 4: Joining Paradigms Project sketch models and section by Kathryn Drew, 2008 Figure 5: Joining Paradigms Project based on a screw fastener by Simone Delaney, 2009