I’m not 100% sure what qualifies as design theory writing? I read a lot about interior design, books like “What is interior design?”, “Drawing out the interior”, “The fundamentals of Interior Architecture” and “AVA series: Retail Design”, they are sort of case studies analyzing different projects in depth with floor-plans, visuals, annotations and looking at projects from different perspectives, also giving examples how to present a project well, and they are very easy-to-read books, with coherent graphic language through. I don’t think they are design theory writings though, even if they are technically about design?
So I had this reading on last year CTS, which is by James Dunett, the title is “Le Corbusier and the City without streets”, it compares different architects’ theoretical works and actual designs and showing how Le Corbusier’s modernist urban design ideas were rejected by his contemporaries, but could be used now. The text can be found online in form of pdf, but also I typed in one of my favourite parts, where he explains what he means by city without streets:
“… it was the problem of how to accommodate the car that he devoted the most energy, and the drawings of the aspect of the Radiant City are technically amongst the most impressive and intruding. He seemed to have found a very comprehensive answer to this thorny problem. There was to be a pedestrian segregation by level (pedestrians on the ground, vehicles In the air – not the other way round), grade-separation at all major vehicular crossings, widely-spaced limited-access dual-carriageway highways without any building frontages, and parking structures at every door. Local distribution would be on foot within the buildings. It was a solution that required a radical break from the traditional city street which combines vehicles, pedestrians, and building frontages in a single hard-surfaced channel. On the contrary, the city floor is green, crossed by a light network of elevated roads remote from the buildings (thus removed from the noise and fumes of traffic), and the car apparently kept visually well under control. Why then has this not been achieved? Why does the environment in so many housing estates which reflect at least some Corbusian urban ideas, such as Stuyvesant Town in New York, tend to be dominated at ground level by cars and tarmac rather than greenery? And why did elevated motorways neither solve the urban transport problem nor in practice fit as neatly into the urban fabric as they seem to do in the plans of the Radiant City?”
I think it’s a good writing in terms of it’s very imaginative, it’s easy to picture the things he’s talking about. James Dunett uses appropriate quotes from well-known professionals, which he introduces as well in text, also well selected imagery. He puts up a strong argument on the side of Le Corbusier, analyzing why he has been rejected and how the critics could be wrong. It doesn’t look like he’s taking a side, but by the end of reading everyone will get the impression what he wants us to get (Le Corbusier’s idea is cool), which is really clever.
Julia needs a blog. 
DR MARK INGHAM (@MALARKEYPALAVER) says:
Have a look at:
http://www.brepettis.com/blog/2009/3/3/the-cult-of-done-manifesto.html
What do you think?
The Cult of Done Manifesto
There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
There is no editing stage.
Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
Once you’re done you can throw it away.
Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
Destruction is a variant of done.
If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
Done is the engine of more.
It reminds me of Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth which I read last year and found one of the most inspiring texts I came across that term.
“1) Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
2) Forget about good.
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.
3) Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.
4) Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child)
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.
5) Go deep.
The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.
6) Capture accidents.
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.
7) Study.
A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.
8) Drift.
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
9)Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.
10) Everyone is a leader.
Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.
11)Harvest ideas.
Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.
12)Keep moving.
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.
13)Slow down.
Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.
14)Don’t be cool.
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
15)Ask stupid questions.
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.
16) Collaborate.
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.
17)____________________.
Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.
18)Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.
19) Work the metaphor.
Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
20)Be careful to take risks.
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.
21)Repeat yourself.
If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.
22)Make your own tools.
Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.
23)Stand on someone’s shoulders.
You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.
24)Avoid software.
The problem with software is that everyone has it.
25)Don’t clean your desk.
You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.
26)Don’t enter awards competitions.
Just don’t. It’s not good for you.
27)Read only left-hand pages.
Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”
28)Make new words.
Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.
29) Think with your mind.
Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.
30) Organization = Liberty.
Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a ‘charming artifact of the past.
31) Don’t borrow money.
Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.
32) Listen carefully.
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
33) Take field trips.
The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.
34) Make mistakes faster.
This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.
35) Imitate.
Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.
36) Scat.
When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.
37) Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
38) Explore the other edge.
Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.
39) Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.
Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.
40) Avoid fields.
Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.
41) Laugh.
People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.
42) Remember.
Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.
43) Power to the people.
Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.”