unknown positions of imagination in design

DesignIssues: Volume 30, Number 4 Autumn 20146 2014 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Unknown Positions of Imagination in Design Mads Nygaard Folkmann

IntroductionEven though imagination may seem a pivotal ingredient in devel-oping design, difficulties arise in describing it. And even though the notion of imagination as formative in creative processes dates back to, at least, Romanticism,1 and imagination has played a cen-tral role in notions of idea formation and creativity,2 it has received little attention as a research topic in relation to design. Exceptions do existfor example, in the attempt to link design and the forma-tion of images in imaging.3 However, the topic generally has received only limited attention and has not been embedded in larger frameworks, such as cultural theory or practice-oriented theories. Instead, the theme of design creativity has emerged and defined a field of its own.4 Also, from a sociological point of view, the concern has been to focus on the designers contribution in professional contexts that draws on a core of creativity.5 Taking a different approach, my proposal is to use imagi-nation as a means to investigate the construction of meaning in design. Further, this path is the opposite of claiming the imagi-nation as a hidden source of creativity in the human consciousness and thus confirming the (post-)Romantic ideology of imagi-nation as an equally powerful and inaccessible force. Instead, my approach is to regard imagination as operative on an epistemo-logical level in staging conditions of experience and to offer a phenomenological analysis of the effect of imagination on meaning creation in design. In relation to design, this approach raises the question of how the objects of design, in the process of designing, are positioned, perceived, and conceptualized as vehicles for creat-ing new meaning.

Imagination as a Mental and Cultural ForceImportantly, imagination is not only a matter of epistemology but also of cultural and social meaning. On this point, the heritage from the Romantic idea of the imagination is to acknowledge its role as a cultural forcethat is, as a force that creates cultural and social meaning on a level beyond the potential revolutions of the

1 James Engell, Creative Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980).

2 Edward S. Casey, Imagining: A Phenomenological Study (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1976); Vaune Ainsworth-Land, Imaging and Creativity: An Integrating Perspective, The Journal of Creative Behavior 16, no. 1 (1982): 528.

3 Terry Liddament, The Myths of Imagery, Design Studies 21, no. 6 (2000): 589606.

4 Nagai Yukari and Toshiharu Taura, eds., Design Creativity 2010 (London: Springer, 2011).

5 David Wang and Ali O. Ilhan, Holding Creativity Together: A Sociological Theory of the Design Professions, Design Issues 25, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 521.

doi:10.1162/DESI_a_00293

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individual mind (although the Romantics were very fond of such revolutions). Within Romanticism, it is a central claim of S. T. Coleridges theoretical manifesto Biographia Literaria [Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions] (1817) to conceive of the human imagination as an emancipating force that influences not only the singular human mind but also how all human meaning is experienced and comprehended. A notion of a social imagination develops. The basic notion is that not only does the world of physi-cal and tangible things matter, but so too (and even more so) do individual and collective aspirations, conceptions, and principles of meaning organization. Beyond Romanticism, cultural theorist Arjun Appadurai anchors imagination in the context of cultural theory and describes the imaginary and imagination as terms that direct us to some-thing critical and new in global cultural processes: the imagination as a social practice. At this point, says Appadurai, we do not speak of a simple escape, but of an organized field of social practices, a form of work [...] and a form of negotiation between sites of agency (individuals) and globally defined fields of possibility. The imag-ination is now central to all forms of agency, is itself a social fact, and is the key component of the new global order.6 To imagine, then, is to create meaning that can have social effect.7 Thus, from the perspective of cultural theory, the concept of imagination can be used to describe something that is not given, per se, but that exists as possibility, and that nevertheless still has a present effect as, cre-ated in the minds of people, it guides their behavior, ideas, and ori-entation in the world. Seen in relation to the creation of new possibilities, theories of imagination as a social and cultural force exceeding the human mind enter the field of meaning formation on two levels. First, on a macro level, imagination enters the field of cultural theory when it is seen in relation to the enabling and stimulation of possibilities, with a starting point in the desire of humans to interact with their sur-roundings. An example is media theorist Anne Balsamos concept of a performative technological imagination, which functions as a mindset that enables people to think with technology, to transform what is known into what is possible.8 In Balsamos perspective, this engagement with imagination affects how culture as a socially shared symbolic system of signs and meanings is conceived, understood, and produced, whereby shaping the technological imagination is a cultural imperative of the highest order.9 Second, on a micro level, imagination can be seen to create structures and figurations of meaning. To illustrate, sociologist Peter Murphy has formulated the search for the possible in relation to a concept of imagination as an act of figuration. With a power of organization, such figuration is involved in object creation,

6 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 31. Another example is Cornelius Castoriadiss social theory of the imaginary as a generative dynamics of creating common notions of society on the basis of an open stream of the collective anonymous, with the ability to enable social institutions. See Cornelius Castoriadis, LInstitution Imaginaire de la Socit [The Imaginary Institution of Society] (Paris: ditions du seuil, 1975), 493.

7 That imaginary meaning may have social effect can be seen in the fact that the feeling of belonging to a nation is to be part of an imagined community, as precisely phrased by cultural historian Benedict Anderson. See Benedict Ander-son, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991).

8 Anne Balsamo, Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011), 6.

9 Ibid., 5, 7.

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10 Peter Murphy, Michael A. Peters, and Simon Marginson, Imagination: Three Models of Imagination in the Age of the Knowledge Economy (New York: Peter Lang, 2010), 2629.

11 In this way, we can detect how societies at different times can be more or less imaginativehow they can show different degrees of creativity and vision in the production of meaning. In Murphys analysis, the European Renaissance, for example, was a period with a flourish of creative endeavors, whereas the contemporary age is seen on the large scale, somewhat pessimistically, as a period of few creative achievements. Ibid., 6.

12 John Heskett speaks of a cultural context where design is a primary element in stimulating the awareness of possibilities. See John Heskett, Toothpicks and Logos (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002),133.

13 See also Mads Nygaard Folkmann, The Aesthetics of Imagination in Design (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013).

enacted through a series of form-generation media and a devel-opment of patterns (e.g., hierarchy, balance, repetition, similarity, and proportion), all of which reside at the intersection of the sen-suousness of materials and the meaningfulness of explicit forms.10 Thus, as a principle of meaning generation rooted in practical real-ity, the figurative ability of imagination is seen by Murphy to inter-fere in the social-cultural sphere.11 In my view, we must focus on both aspects of imagination in relation to the creation of cultural meaning in design: (1) the macro-creation of cultural possibilities when design is used as a means for humans to engage with the world,12 and (2) the micro-formative structures of meaning in design. Thus, the following discussion can be understood as a contribution both to a cultural theory of design (i.e., what is the role of design in creating new possibilities?) and to a discussion of meaning formation in design (how might mental positions of the imagination in acts of figuration affect object cre-ation?). In the following paragraphs, my primary focus is on the lat-ter of these two aspects. However, they cannot ultimately be under-stood without each other: To look at meaning formation in design is also, at least implicitly, to investigate the role of design as a princi-ple of human interaction with the worldthat is, in creating cul-tural meaning. In relation to the investigation of meaning formation, my phenomenological perspective leads me in a direc-tion of acts of figuration different than Peter Murphys focus on positive presence and structures of balance and order. In contrast, I consider meaning constitution through positions of presence and absence and open the discussion for the role of negativity and non-order in the formation of meaning in design and its ability to create new possibilities. My phenomenological approach is to look at modes and positions of the imagination, to look at the effects on meaning production that result from the workings of the imagination, and to relate these effects to the development of meaning in design. Although we cannot access the mechanisms of imagination directly, we can try to describe its workings on a structural level: how it relates to and creates conceptual meaning.13 A central claim of this article is that a vital element of imagi-nation in design is its relationship to knowledgeto what can be known, what the role of knowledge in design processes is, and how knowledge (as well as non-knowledge) is active through design in cultural meaning creation. In particular, what is at play when we put imagination on the agenda is the role of the unknown as a driver of meaning formation in design.


Models of ImaginationIn the following I look at the structural coding of imagination in design workat different positions of imaginative, mental settings that determine how the object of design is perceived and associated with meaning. This mental setting can be viewed as a particular way of linking the conceptual framework of the design task with the material manifestation in the design objects. First, I examine two different structural characteristics of imagination in relation to the production of meaning: its unfolding as a synthetic activity vs. a dispersive operation and its function of producing presence vs. evoking absence. Second, I introduce the central concept of schematization and indicate how it contributes to framing the operation of imagination in design. Synthetic vs. Dispersive ImaginationFirst, we can identify two distinct ways of conceiving imagination with regard to the effect of its operation: synthetic activity vs. dis-persive activity. On the one hand, imagination is often associated with a synthetic activity. This perspective is part of its tradition from Romanticism, most notably in the claim by English Romanti-cist S. T. Coleridge that imagination is a synthesizing, coalescing power.14 Imagination is what connects and unites the most dispa-rate aspects in thinking and material, resulting in some kind of product. Here, we might regard imagination as equivalent to the synthetic activity of the design process, where positions in design methodology have described both linear models and dynamic models. The former are mostly one-way approaches of analysis that lead to synthesis and in turn to evaluation before possibly performing a feedback loop to new analysis and synthesis; the lat-ter include, for example, John Chris Joness notion of the design process as a dynamic succession of divergence (opening up prob-lems), transformation (creating new patterns of the problem), and convergence (the creation of a solution), as well as Bryan Lawsons circular-dynamic models of the design process as an ongoing nego-tiation between problem view and solution view in the interchange of analytical, synthetic, and evaluative perspectives of design work.15 Notably, design theory is fond of synthesis as the means through which design solutions can be found. From the perspective of imagination, however, synthesis is not the only aspect. Imagination might also have a dispersive function; it has the capacity to lead us astray. Interestingly, this wandering is also a part of the Romantic concept of imagination. Here, a central part of the imaginative dynamics is the expansive, centrifugal movement of creative, inspirational enthusiasm, which takes the imaginings far beyond any given constraints.16 Imagina-tion thus approaches the visionary, which can also be associated with design, but it also brings it close to the chaotic, which is not typically part of the design discourse.

14 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1984).

15 John Chris Jones, Design Methods: Seeds of Human Futures (New York: John Wiley, 1980); and Bryan Lawson, How Designers Think (Oxford: Architectural Press, 2005).

16 The double movement of centrifugal and centripetal forces is also evident in the post-Romantic tradition, such as in Nietzsches formulation of the coexistence of the ecstatic Dionysian principle with the prudent and clear-headed Apollonian principle in Die Geburt der Tragdie [The Birth of Tragedy] (1872).


In placing these two notions in the foreground, I aim to make three points: First,toomuchideologyconcerningdesigncreativity clings to the concept of the synthetic in a search for the wholes and entities that can be produced by design. This position is echoed in creativity theory, for example, by Peter Murphy who acknowledges the divergent potential of imagination but presents it as leading to and resulting in order. Murphy further claims the harmonizing and coalescing element of imagination and relates it to aesthetic principles like proportion, economy, and symmetry.17 This view is not unprob- lematic, in that equilibrium and harmony are thus implicitly held up as the central structuring principles of human experience.18 Second,thetwonotionsofimaginationsyntheticvs. dispersive, ordering vs. chaotic, convergent vs. diver- gentare mutually co-dependent, as Murphy also indicates. However, my point is that they are co-existent, not that one necessarily leads to the other. Likewise, Romanticism saw the expansive, centrifugal movement of creative, inspirational enthusiasm as part of a whole that also involves a kind of centripetal contraction and reflection.19 As a matrix for enabling and maintaining imaginative vision, the framework of the duality of enthusiasm and reflection reaches beyond Romanticism; it is present in various models of idea generation and creativity, as in Henry Poincars famous model, in which phases of incubation, a more or less sudden illumination in the breakthrough of an insight of the new idea, and verification succeed one another.20 Balance and order are important, but so is chaos. Third,foregroundingtheelementofthedispersiveand chaotic in imagination and its relationship to design might prove advantageous. The chaotic is not just something to be avoided but can be productive. By addressing the non-ordering element of the imagination and relating it to design, we might gain a new perspective on knowledge in design: that it not only is the result of synthesizing activities, which create order and coherence, but also is marked by a constitutive movement of dispersion that reaches out to the borderline of the known and goes beyond it, to the unknown. Philosopher Jean-Jacques Wunenburger similarly reformulates the relationship between the ordering and the chaotic principles of imagination.21 He sees the ordered product of imagination as limited, static content that can never go beyond the

17 Murphy, Imagination, 82.18 Murphys concept of imagination is

thus in accordance with the part of aesthetic theory that views principles of equilibrium and order as outstanding aesthetic features, including John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Penguin, 2005), and Richard Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).

19 Friedrich Schlegel, Kritische Schriften und Fragmente 16 [Critical Writings and Fragments 16], Ernst Behler and Hans Eichner, eds. (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schningh, 1988).

20 Henri Poincar, The Foundations of Science (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982).

21 Jean-Jacques Wunenburger, LImaginaire [The Imaginary] (Paris: Presses Universi-taires des France, 2003).


content that is put into it by imagination; it will always be restrained by the limitations of perception. Conversely, he suggests a sort of dynamicexpanding imagination that in integrating all sorts of activities of imagination, designates systematic groups of images while carry- ing on some kind of auto-organizing, auto-generating principle that, without halt, permits the opening of the imaginary towards the innovation, transformation, the new creation.22

Hence, my claim is that imagination deals not only with making and materializing new entities of meaningfor example, in a prod-uct or a design solutionbut also with reflecting and integrating elements of the unknown. Accordingly, a central element of the work of designers is to work with the invisible frontiers of the unknown in their progressive approach to creating the new and not-yet-existing. According to this line of argument, acknowledging the role and importance of the unknown is essential. We must inte-grate the element of the unknown into the design process as a con-stitutive, productive factor for designnot simply as a lack of data, but as a driver of design development. I examine how to do so in the sections on schematization.

Presence vs. Absence in ImaginationWe might ask next what the product of imagination looks like and, further, what characterizes its ontology. Strictly speaking, the first and immediate product of the mental act of imagining is not an object or a product, but an inner mental image. As a locus and medium for imagining, the imageseen here as a formative principle in designcan lead in new directions and serve as an important source for the production of new meaning. Importantly, the image simultaneously is an evocation of new presence and is based on negation: On the one hand, a central legacy of Romanticism is the notion of imagination as a creative, productive power that leads to an abundance of new creations. Here, the focus is on the new presence created by imagination. On the other hand, imagination leads not only to abundance but also to its inverse: the emptiness of representation. The empirical foundation of the mental image has been questioned. Thus, in a phenomenological analysis, Jean-Paul Sartre has pointed out that the imaginary is a product of and marked by negation: The inner mental image annihilates and unrealizes the real-life object.23 The non-presence of the object in consciousness, then, is two-sided. Although the consciousness has the freedom to produce new images on the basis of the object and, in the words of Maurice Blanchot, to idealize it and raise it to a higher meaning,24 nega-tivity also is to be taken seriously. In Blanchots analysis, the

22 Ibid., 1213.23 Jean-Paul Sartre, LImaginaire [The

Imaginary] (Paris: Gallimard, 1940), 3035.

24 Maurice Blanchot, The Space of the Literary (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 260.


imaginary image not only makes the object absent, it also makes the absence present. Blanchot precisely states the double structure of the image as the potential of both presence and absence. Compre-hending the negation and emptiness as a constitutive part of the imaginary image, rather than positing this image as a structure con-stituted entirely of overflowing meaning, is important. Still, the imaginary and the image enable new perspectives on reality, which are focused not only on the actual but also, through negation, on the virtual.25 In relation to design, this virtual perspective questions the ontology of the design object in the course of developing it: In its becoming, it can be positioned as something not there (as negation), with a virtual potentiality of becoming a new being that has never before been seen.

Mapping the Structure of ImaginationTo summarize, imagination can be described in a framework of two polarities: one regarding the activity and mode of operation (creat-ing order vs. embracing chaos) and the other the product and its ontology (presence vs. absence). Different positions of imagination can be described by combining these polarities. Visualizing these polarities in a coordinate system, in which where the polarity of activity is placed on the y-axis and the polarity of product is placed on the x-axis, produces four quadrants, which describe different positions in imagination (see Figure 1).

25 Sabine Wettig, Imagination im Erkenntnisprozess. Chancen und Herausforderungen im Zeitalter der Bildmedien [The Imagination in the Process of Cognition. Opportunities and Challenges in the Era of Images] (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2009).

Figure 1 Positions of imagination with regard to ontology and mode of operation.

Positions of Imagination

Order Concepts Idealizing Known Fixture Absence Virtuality Actuality Presence Unknown Disruption Negativity New Organization of Meaning Chaos Dispersion

Ontology

Mode of Operation


In the upper right quadrant, imagination is seen as creating order and presencethe position of new design objects and the result of a structured and ordered imagination. Here, things are present and known. In fact, this quadrant might reflect a position of objects more so than one of imagination, in that imagination cannot be made present, per se. Next, in the upper left quadrant, imagination is still marked by order but also by negation. In this position, the potential for imagination to idealize is activated. Here, imagination uses nega-tion to create new principles of order and a presence of something that is otherwise absent. In the lower left quadrant, the combination of absence and chaos produces a dangerous cocktail. Here, imagination approaches an abyss characterized by the absence of all meaning in a maelstrom of dispersion. This position might seem counter-productive, but the point is that it must be acknowledged as part of the dynamics of imagination, and that it designates a position of non-knowledgethat is, a letting-go of acquired (i.e., known) knowledge and ordering principles. It stands in a dialectical oppo-sition to the upper right corner and is, so to speak, its condition and nurturing principle: Without letting go of control and meaning, we cannot create new meaning but would be stuck in the fixation of the given.26 Finally, the lower right quadrant describes a position of chaos combined with the presence of meaning. Visible disruption characterizes this quadrant, where a new organization of meaning takes place; further, this combination can be seen as the place of the visionary flights of the imagination, where meaning takes new directions and evolves, without being anchored, however, in a basic organizing principle. The process of allowing the chaotic becoming of new meaning mirrors the principle at play in the opposite corner of the model. Here, new meaning also evolves but is based on nega-tion and with a tendency toward idealization. Design processes can be said to use both principles of meaning creation: Idealization is sought through the mental image and its negating power, and a new presence of meaning (in the becoming of the design object) is encountered by seeking the chaotic moment of non-linear or non-goaloriented re-creation and re-arrangement of meaning (e.g., in creating ever new models and prototypes).

SchematizationThis approach to imagination can be connected to the concept of schematization. As I use the term, schematization derives from German philosopher Immanuel Kants seminal epistemology, Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason] (1781/1787). Kant sees

26 In a managerial context, the same process is proposed by C. O. Scharmer, Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges (Cambridge, MA: Society for Organizational Learning, 2007). Scharmers approach is influenced by a high degree of anthroposophic mysticism, in the notion that the coming of the new is enabled by letting go of the old; instead, I suggest a subsequent phase of actively organizing new meaning by working with conceptual meaning.


schematization as an ability in imagination to create meaningful experience when sensual appearances meet human inescapable structures of time and space and of the conceptual constructions of cognition. Kant proposes the scheme as a matrix for the apperceptive and synthesizing linking of concepts and sensual, sensory, and per-ceptually given appearances and thus for the human production of meaning.27 The scheme conditions human ability to construct mean-ing through synthesis. Because it pertains to the imagination, the scheme is not given once and for all but is open to alteration and new configurations. We see that meaning is not simply given but is created in a complex interaction of constructive factors. In under-standing our own seeing and understanding, we learn about the nature and structure of these factors and see that they are flexible and can be altered.28 In this way, the notion of schematization can be made productive: It is a way of conceptualizing the construction of meaning in design as a meeting of sensual material and appearance on the one hand and of conceptual constructions on the other hand. Enhancing Kants epistemological framework, we can raise the question of whether any variations of schematization exist in the dynamic space between individual dispositions and social con-texts. Kants point is that the structures of schematization are bound in the singular subject but ideally apply to all humans. How-ever, imaginations vary individually, and processes of developing meaning (e.g., in design) are always social and socially situated. The social aspect of schematization can be related to cultural theory through a gridgroup typology, where two spectrums can describe how schematization can be bound in different social con-texts and be submitted to social control.29 First, the question of schematization can be raised in relation to the group: Does a strong group consensus influence the creation of meaning by relating con-cepts and sensual matter? In design, this consensus can be noted in company notions of how to operate in the realm of knowledge pro-duction, for example. Further, a consensus about how to be cre-ative in relation to meaning creation might exist in the design profession as a result of the process of socialization in design edu-cation. Thus, design professionals mightas a grouphave ideas about (schematizing) meaning creation and might operate with social processes of inclusion and exclusion.30 The group (e.g., the firm, the profession, etc.) decides what the norm of creative work should be. Second, we might ask about the balance of individual freedom vs. grids. In other words, what are the modes of regula-tion? To what degree does the schematizing subject play freely with the connections of concepts and sensual material? What rules, if any, determine the game?

27 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason] (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1990), B177.

28 Thus, design theorist Henrik Gedenryd has proposed that creativity in design can be indirectly enhanced through a better understanding of some of the mecha-nisms and processes in cognition that underlie design creativity, that practice can perhaps take advantage of an improved understanding of its underlying principles. Henrik Gedenryd, How Designers Work: Making Sense of Authentic Cognitive Activities (Lund: Lund University Cognitive Studies, 1998), 3.

29 Michael Thompson, Richard Ellis, and Aaron Wildavsky, Cultural Theory (Boul-der, CO: Westview Press, 1990), 6. The grid-group typology has been set forth by anthropologist Mary Douglas but is here embedded in a context of cultural theory.

30 For a discussion of design as a profession with a specific notion or core of creativity, see Wang and Ilhan, Holding Creativity Together. See also the discus-sion of the formation of creative profes-sions in the paradigmatic case study by Dana Cuff. See Dana Cuff, Architecture: The Story of Practice (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991).


My proposal is to speak of a mental setting in design and for designers as a way of approaching the question of how an intention or an idea in designa conceptmight relate to the possible out-come in a material manifestation. This setting might have individ-ual character, but the schematization in design is grid-bound to some extent. Three general meta-conceptual settings are at play in the process of turning inner imaginings into objects: knowledge, perspective, and focus.31 These settings are specifically marked by the discourse of designthat is, of the professional discourse and methodology that designers as a group use.32 However, how group identities and designer roles inflect imaginations requires a larger, empirical study of how designers work and organize themselves. In this article, I keep my focus on the mental setting in design in rela-tion to knowledge and look at it in a general, epistemological per-spective, although I acknowledge that it is always framed by a grid (i.e., by specific concepts in design of what knowledge is) and by group identities (i.e., by how a group, such as a consultancy, stages knowledge and relates to it).

Known and UnknownThe interface of known vs. unknown can be seen as a structure of schematization that generates meaning by linking concepts and material matter; we can localize this interface as a mental setting that determines how meaning is produced. This perspective marks a shift from regarding non-knowledge as a lack of knowledge or dataa gap that we need to compensate forto regarding it as a resource in the process of generating new knowledge. (This view also characterizes an avant-garde notion of new knowledge as being disruptive in relation to what we already know.)33 As a link between concepts and sensual appearances in the structure of sche-matization, the interface of known vs. unknown filters the construc-tion of experience and meaning. This structure of knowledge can be circumscribed by the grid of design methodology, and an aware-ness of it can be an asset in the design process. Further, I point to a mechanism in schematization where the unknown plays the leading role. In his work on aesthetic experi-ence, Kritik der Urtheilskraft [Critique of Judgment] (1790), Kant uses the flexibility of schematization in relation to judgments of taste.34 Judgment of taste operates without concepts; through the imagina-tion, it might schematize openly without given concepts. It operates in a search for concepts that fit the appearances. The point is that imagination can perform the operation of linking sensual matter with conceptual meaning in an open, non-teleological construction of the concepts involved. Thus, cognition can entail an open search of concepts to fit a given appearance.

31 Folkmann, Aesthetics of Imagination in Design, 10538.

32 As pointed out by Claudia Mareis, all design theory is but the opposite of being value-free and disconnected from the social (and group-based) contexts from which it derives; promoting specific notions of, for example, design theory is never free of interests, a social structure, and discursive frame. Claudia Mareis, Design als Wissenskultur: Interferenzen zwischen Design- und Wissensdiskursen seit 1960 [Design as a Culture of Knowledge. Interferences between Discourses of Design and Knowledge Since 1960] (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2012).

33 Peter Friedrich Stephan, Wissen und Nicht-Wissen im Entwurf, [Knowledge and Non-Knowledge in Design] in Entwerfen. Wissen, Produzieren: Designforschung im Anwendungskontext [Design. Knowledge. Production: Design Research in Use Context], Claudia Mareis, Gesche Joost, and Kora Kimpel, eds. (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2010): 81100.

34 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urtheilskraft [Critique of Judgment] (Kln: Knemann, 1995).


Kant aims at this possibility with his concept of aesthetic ideas, which he sees as the kind of apprehension of the imagination that entails much to think about, although there is no definite thought that is, conceptthat can be adequate to it, and which, consequently, cannot be comprehended or made comprehen- sible in any language.35 Through the imagination, aesthetic ideas exceed any given concepts; they produce a surplus and a multi-tude of ideas, conceptions, and apprehensions that may engage in new combinations and connections, which paradoxically leaves much unnameable [Unnennbares] to be thought of in relation to a concept.36 To Kant, aesthetic ideas have two features. First, they do not have a concept as their starting point. Kant speaks of reflective judgment in opposition to determining judgment; the latter serves to make sensual appearances and concepts fit symmet-rically, while the former describes an open reflection on the sensual without the determination of a pre-existing concept. Second, aes-thetic ideas can be a means of relating to meaning beyond the given, to Vernunftideen, by which he means transsensual ideas of reason. In this sense, the sensual is reflected in concepts that exceed normal comprehension. In the context of design, we must focus both on the process of exceeding given concepts and on the search for new ones to fit the unknown. An example of this dual approach can be seen in the German design firm, FUCHS+FUNKE. In many cases, the start-ing point of the firms experimental design in the dichotomy of known vs. unknown is an inward meditation seeking to position the design process as a search for the unknown. The intention, according to partner Wilm Fuchs, is to discover cross-links or intersections of the known and unknown, thus enabling something hitherto not possible.37

35 Ibid., 198.36 Ibid., 201.37 Interview conducted with Wilm Fuchs,

Berlin, Germany, December 10, 2009.

Figure 2 Papton, folded paperboard. Design: FUCHS+FUNKE.


This approach is reflected, for example, in Papton (from 2004 and on; see Figure 2), an origami chair that is still in the process of discovering its form. In many regards, Papton is a design in process; based on the material constraints of a standard sheet of paperboard, the design can be understood as an ongoing search for ultimate and minimalist form by using the origami technique to produce a chair.38 According to Fuchs, the design sprang from a basic idea that operates as a principle for development by setting the direction for the process of materializing the idea in new ways. One way of understanding this search might be to see it in relation to an implicit assumption of creating a perfect expression of form, where the inside properties of the paperboard contain an ideal chair that simply needs to be discovered and carried out in the design; the design, then, would ultimately lead to the perfect, one-and-only expression of form. Another and more appropriate approach would be to see the process as an example of Kantian aesthetic schematization, where the concepts for the design (the principle of folding in the right way) are continually explored in a process of infinite approxima-tion. In this perspective, the ways of folding the paperboard all con-tribute to the open process of the non-teleological construction of the concepts involved. The chair is the result of a mental setting of openness toward the relationship between known and unknown. By taking into account the fact that the solution to the problemhow to make the ultimate origami chair out of a standard sheet of paperboardis developed in a process of infinite approximation (the folding can always change slightly), the design process takes on the character of a negotiation of the known and is given in the material matter of the chair, and of the unknown, in the conceptual construction of its form.

Schematization in ProcessDesign is often a search for the not-yet-existing and never-before-seen solution. From this perspective, the role of knowledge comes into play in design processes: How do we search for the new with-out reproducing what already exists? How does imagination exceed the limitation of being bound to what is already given? Or is imagination simply a matter of finding new ways of combining existing materials and creating a new synthetic order? We might not ever solve the mystery of how we gain new knowledge in design, but I propose two points: First, we can gain a cognitive advantage by being aware of the paradox of knowledge production and the role of imagination in design: We seek the new, but all knowledge and imagination take their starting point in what we know, and what is given. Thus, to seek something new, we must consciously work within the constraints of the given and expand them. Second, as a mechanism of imagination, schematization can

38 Further, Papton, echoes the Panton Chair (1960) not only in its name but also in its ambition to make a chair in one piece of material.


be regarded as a productive device for seeking the new and unknown, thus making the unknown a driver for design processes. In this sense, the notion of an open schematization without con-cepts can be combined with the model of imagination discussed. Accordingly, I suggest a four-stage process of meaning formation through different positions of imagination, as shown in Figure 3.

The four stages include the following: 1. The process of open schematization takes its starting point in the upper right corner, where the domain of presence and order designates what is given and known. 2. Next, the process aims at letting go of the present in a process of negating to obtain a kind of order that may not be present in real life (i.e., a tendency toward idealization). Here, concepts are the defining factor: Ultimately, concepts that are purified of any material constraints are what create idealization. Concepts might create a degree of order that is not present in a real-life context. 3. In the pivotal moment, we must let go of the concepts. The decisive point is the transition from the sphere of order and idealization to the sphere of dispersion and chaos. To let go of the concepts is to challenge their role and effect and to avoid being controlled by the ordering principle of the concept.

Figure 3 Process of schematization in relation to positions of the imagination.

Process of Schematization

Order Concepts Idealizing Known: Lead by Concepts Design Solutions Absence Virtuality Actuality Presence Dissolved Concepts: New Organization Lead by Experiments of Meaning: Becoming of Solutions Chaos Dispersion

Ontology

Mode of Operation


4. In a design context, letting go of the concepts and seeking the dispersion of meaning quickly leads to a kind of material manifestation and a new organization of meaning, as illustrated in the lower right corner. Thus, the process can turn to concrete matters in the form of open-ended experimentation with materials. Or the design might try to make present and reflect the kind of conceptual meaning by which it is structured.

Finally, after a detour into the land without concepts, the design process returns to the sphere of the known and, potentially, pro-vides new presence to a new kind of ordering principle. Hence, the productive relevance of gaining knowledge in design progresses by challenging its mode of operation and ontology and thereby seek-ing to let go of conceptual meaning. In many regards, this approach is not new to designers experience; the design process often does not begin with the abstract concept but with the concrete material, even if the clients brief is conceptually anchored. My contribution to the discussion is to describe the process in which a mental setting is used that encourages an open schematization of the unknown.

EpilogueExploring the workings of the productive imagination can provide insight into the workings of the tacit parts of the design process. In this article I have aimed to relate insights into modes of imagina-tionthat is, to relate aspects of the human mind to elements of meaning formation in design. In doing so, my ambition has been to describe the effects of the imagination beyond the constraints of the singular human consciousness. In the end, on the inter-subjective level of processes in design, the human imagination really faces the challenges of being truly culturally productive.

unknown positions of imagination in design

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