The Philosophy of Design is an introduction to the fundamental philosophical issues raised by the contemporary practice of design. The first book to systematically examine design from the perspective of contemporary philosophy, it offers a broad perspective, ranging across key philosophical areas such as aesthetics, epistemology, metaphysics and ethics. The first part of the book explores central issues about the nature of design and its products, and the rationality of design methods. A central theme is that Modernist ideas, such as those offered by Loos and Gropius, provide important responses to these philosophical issues. In the second part of the book, these Modernist ideas serve as touchstones in the exploration of key issues for design, including: the place of aesthetics in design; designs relation to personal expression; the meaning of function; and designs relation to consumerism. The social responsibility of designers, and the impact of design practice on ethical reasoning are also discussed. Written in an accessible style, The Philosophy of Design presents a new perspective on design and a provocative reassessment of the Modernist legacy. It will engage students and designers with current philosophical debates, helping them to bring into clearer focus the meaning of contemporary design, and its unique challenges and possibilities.

"This book addresses the topic of software design: how to decompose complex software systems into modules (such as classes and methods) that can be implemented relatively independently. The book first introduces the fundamental problem in software design, which is managing complexity. It then discusses philosophical issues about how to approach the software design process and it presents a collection of design principles to apply during software design. The book also introduces a set of red flags that identify design problems. You can apply the ideas in this book to minimize the complexity of large software systems, so that you can write software more quickly and cheaply."--Amazon.

This volume provides the reader with an integrated overview of state-of-the-art research in philosophy and ethics of design in engineering and architecture. It contains twenty-five essays that focus on engineering designing in its traditional sense, on designing in novel engineering domains, and on architectural and environmental designing. This volume enables the reader to overcome the traditional separation between engineering designing and architectural designing.

The author outlines the major ideas and issues that have emerged in the growing movement of green architecture and sustainable design over the last thirty years. The book asks individuals to understand how the philosophy of sustainable design can affect their own work.

This book explores and explains the fundamentals of interior design. Because it does not emphasize current trends and fashion, its value will be long lasting.

Luciano Floridi presents an innovative approach to philosophy, conceived as conceptual design. He explores how we make, transform, refine, and improve the objects of our knowledge. His starting point is that reality provides the data, to be understood as constraining affordances, and we transform them into information, like semantic engines. Such transformation or repurposing is not equivalent to portraying, or picturing, or photographing, or photocopying anything. It is more like cooking: the dish does not represent the ingredients, it uses them to make something else out of them, yet the reality of the dish and its properties hugely depend on the reality and the properties of the ingredients. Models are not representations understood as pictures, but interpretations understood as data elaborations, of systems. Thus, he articulates and defends the thesis that knowledge is design and philosophy is the ultimate form of conceptual design. Although entirely independent of Floridi's previous books, The Philosophy of Information (OUP 2011) and The Ethics of Information (OUP 2013), The Logic of Information both complements the existing volumes and presents new work on the foundations of the philosophy of information.

This book presents for the first time in English an array of essays on design by the seminal media critic and philosopher Vilém Flusser. It puts forward the view that our future depends on design. In a series of insightful essays on such ordinary "things" as wheels, carpets, pots, umbrellas and tents, Flusser emphasizes the interrelationships between art and science, theology and technology, and archaeology and architecture. Just as formal creativity has produced both weapons of destruction and great works of art, Flusser believed that the shape of things (and the designs behind them) represents both a threat and an opportunity for designers of the future.

Engineering and Philosophy seem two worlds apart. But things and ideas are not disjunct in this world, and their synthesis is certainly essential in engineering design. In this book, the author explores how the concerns of philosophers are relevant to engineering thought and practice -in negotiating tradeoffs, in diagnosing failure, in constructing adequate models and simulations, and in teaching. This book is based on a number of lectures given at the Technical University of Delft, where the author was a Visiting Professor hosted by the Philosophy section and the School of Industrial Engineering Design. Louis Bucciarelli is a Professor of Engineering and Technology Studies at MIT. He is the author of numerous publications including the book Designing Engineers. Contents include: Designing, like language, is a social process, What engineers don't know & why they believe it, Knowing that and how, Learning engineering, Extrapolation, Index.

A frank explanation for designers on how to create and implement a practical process for creating functional visual communication Feeling uninspired? That shouldn't keep you from creating great design work. Design is not about luck, inspiration, or personal expression.

Design Philosophy is becoming increasingly important as the nature of design practice and design education change. The Design Philosophy Reader presents and explains the recent emergence of Design Philosophy, illustrates the main concerns of Design Philosophy and demonstrates why Design Philosophy has emerged in recent years, why it is needed, what it can do, how it can be done and where it is going. Comprised of an eight thematic sections, each with a short introduction, to contextualise theory and highlight its implications, and annotated bibliographies, the Reader presents both an argument for the need for Design Philosophy and an overview of its emergence. With texts ranging from writing on design that is informed by philosophy; philosophically informed writing on culture, relevant to the thinking of design; ancient and contemporary philosophy that directly, or by implication, addresses design; and exegesis and commentary on philosophical texts relevant to design.