Paradigm shift in architecture: Business & Urban design

The paradigm shift in architecture: business & urban design is the second article of a series of articles that examine the effect of the paradigm on the way architects work and its effect on firm business and define the major characteristics of a paradigm when it happens in a certain timeline in the architecture field and practice. The study starts from ancient architecture to date modern architecture.

Paradigm shift in architecture: business

Gjoko ¹ in his article shows that design is the main element that entered all businesses in large-scale companies and that is the main cause of the paradigm shift. Design has become popular in business according to some accounts that there are 2.1 million designers in training in China. The business models developed, and the design field developed; accordingly, designers became professionals, and problem solvers, rather than stylists. Professionals consider in work the revolutionary transformation of existing markets, products, or sectors by replacing complexity and high cost with simplicity, convenience, accessibility, and affordability.

The author elaborates and discusses why design entered businesses, how the global market affected design in business work, and how the world sees design now. Most companies included a design department in their companies because of confidentiality, intellectual properties, and design becoming a strategic resource. The taste of the global market affected the design process, in-house design team has changed the contact method (client) from client room, printed documents, and TV ads to internet ways of contact like social media. Design is now seen as a field of thinking rather than making.

Gjoko takes many examples in his study ranging from food products to electronics, financial, banking, and even media companies. Here I will illustrate before discussing and examining the paradigm shift the ideas he presented in his paper.

Apple

Apple changed its production philosophy from a technology base to a design base to compete with other companies in the market. Their friendly shaped products made the product attractive to buy. Apple Business says on their website that design exists in every stage of our production.

Nike

The Business CEO parker says designers must be part of the business side of things.

Coca Cola

The new head of the Business illustrates that coca cola was producing a massive scale of products, but things were not connected together which was a problem in the face of the Business growth. Coca-cola’s designing was against its own interest.

Pricewaterhouse  cooper

The Business shows what designers do. They explore ideas, develop solutions and capitalize on opportunities in unique and powerful ways.

Fidelity Investment / World’s largest financial service provider

Every Business has its way of conducting design in production and business. This Business employs designers that understand consumer behavior, capable of co-designing solutions by iteration of prototypes with their consumers.

Barclays bank

Here designing a financial program and funding that reflects Barclay’s status in the market.

World Bank

The World Bank’s goal was to gather world-leading designers and firms to develop human-centered design method to help poor people in the world.

The author illustrates that these organizations are using design in the context of social innovation, sustainability, and international development. Things have continually evolved, and further design stages are defined as one that deals with problem finding. Designers became part of big businesses and their operations and productions not as individual visionaries. The entry of design in many types of businesses is considered a paradigm shift because these businesses as he says lacked this feature or function before.

In this paper, to define the main ideas related to a paradigm shift, we must have a full understanding of the design and designer’s place before they entered as a main function in the Business as the author showed in his examples.

• For example, Apple was using highly skilled developers and IT people to complete the internal software of their products at the same time compatible with the manufacturing specifications of the hardware. It may be realistic that they did not pay much attention to the product’s external design until the Business grew and became a large-scale Business that could afford to have designers of these types. Their continuous communication with customers and feedback about products gave the Business insights about the importance of the external shape of products. The establishment of a design department in the Business could not be considered a paradigm shift because of its initial existence. Apple’s approach to having an in-house full design team to coordinate all the processes from design to complete production and sales is a very wise step. Having a full team will impact the Business revenue because of limiting the time required to coordinate, and manage activities and resources, and even limits the manpower to the only essential ones.  

• Some of these companies like fidelity Investment have included a department of design in their team because they are not designed related function, the design is outsourced for completion, and they believe in its importance in the first place but for the reasons of time management, cost control, and to obtain maximum efficiency in work and outcomes.

• These companies understand well that a designer in the team is important because he must understand the full process to help the Business reach the designed goals of the product. The designers day by day will become part of the process that automatically enhance the product without a lot of coordination, communication, testing of the product design, and to assist also in collecting feedback about the product after use in the market. That’s why many of these companies faced losses because the designer was isolated from many important parts that he could use in the preparation of the product design.

I consider the existence of a paradigm shift when I think that the process of production is changed from the cost and feasibility of manufacturing to consumer preferences and taste as the initial and the first stage of the full business cycle

Paradigm shift in architecture: urban design

Richard Hu ² the author of the paper believes that the San Francisco urban design plans of 1972 and 1985 are the point of a paradigm shift in the field in the USA. He starts his paper by stating that its argued that innovations reflected in the San Francisco urban design plans represent a paradigm shift. Richard considers Grade classification for innovation in urban design to satisfy two conditions to make a paradigm shift in the field.

• It serves as an example of replication
• It is conceived and promoted as a model of good design

As the author claims this is the liberal sense of khanian framework.

Following are the main points of his study of the two plans of San Francisco:

Downtown San Francisco urban design plan 1972

The plan comprises four sections/city pattern, conservation, major new development, and neighborhood environment.

City pattern

Most of the plan address how the city pattern can be recognized, protected and enhanced through urban design.

Conservation

The policies are concerned with achieving the desired outcomes in three areas: natural areas, the richness of past development, and street space.

Major new development

The policies are concerned with the suggested approaches for the new developments in three areas: visual harmony, height and bulk, and large land areas.

Neighborhood Environment

Policies suggest approaches to achieving the objective in four areas: health and safety, a feeling of neighborhood, opportunities for recreation, and visual amenities.

Downtown San Francisco urban design plan 1982

The plan includes seven sections of important issues like housing commercial space, housing and transport, etc. three sections address exclusively urban design issues: open space, preservation of the past, and the urban form.

Open space

The overall policies and objectives deal with two key requirements for open space availability and accessibility for users, and complementarily with the surrounding built environment. For example, one benchmark target is that everyone will be within 900 feet of public accessible space.

Preserving the past

Classifying the historical buildings into categories 1, 2, and 3.

Urban form

Specifying building shapes that are in harmony with the city pattern, buildings, and streetscape.

As we can see from the two plans main points of study that they are not differing at all in terms of urban design (as he says) public space and open space network design, preserving historical content, respect for city urban form, and fabric such as scale, concepts, and layout.

In the section of his paper where he illustrates his comparative analysis he says:

That there is a methodological shift from an architectonic approach to urban design as public policy.

• First of all, there is a misconception about the profession of urban design. An urban designer is a professional responsible for the management, coordination, and implementation of an urban design plan for a town or a city. That means he is not essentially the direct designer of the urban development; the urban development plan involves various professionals from different fields.
• Most of the paper is describing the plans and the analysis is relying in most of the paper on other researcher’s findings. He is describing the two plans but there is no clear evidence about the previous plans and how they are different in terms of a paradigm shift.
• He needs to clarify how a public policy differs from an architectonic approach to urban design as the goals of the public policy are: visual, environmental, economic, and social.
• A paradigm shift in the way the author describes does not illustrate how that affected the urban design process and procedure. He looks into urban design from a planning perspective and domain.
• The author indicates that these urban plans have been simulated by other USA cities like San Diago, New York, and other countries like (Canada, and Japan). Here a question arises, is it that it is considered a paradigm shift? A visit to Thomas Khan‘s definition in the first article is essential. For a paradigm shift to happen it must be general and applied in any place in the world.
• There are countries in the world that share as he deems the entire constellations mentioned in his definition, but these are the only USA and some countries.
• Table 1 below innovations doesn’t relate to urban design but are mainly characteristics of building urban plan that has limited relations to design.

The author says that these plans share the same common themes as standards and design reviews / do these common themes participate in the urban design process to give the desired results?

Here we have past two domains a business domain and a study that ranged from product design to banking and financial service and even social media. We have passed also a domain that deals with the design of towns and cities in the second article. As mentioned earlier in this article in the design domain in Business there is light evidence that a paradigm shift has been plotted and is really going on in businesses like Apple.

1. Muratovski G, Paradigm Shift: The New Role of Design in Business and Society, She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation (2015), doi: 10.1016/ j.sheji.2015.11.002.
2. Richard Hu (2013) Urban Design Plans for Downtown San Francisco: A Paradigm Shift?, Journal of Urban Design, 18:4, 517-533, DOI: 10.1080/13574809.2013.824366