Thinking Design

Notes on Process and Pedagogy

Abstract

Everyone thinks. However, because thinking is a given faculty of human beings it is frequently assumed that what it means to think is clear; and this assumption leads to little attention being paid to the training of thinking itself. Consequently, thinking becomes just something we use to do other things. Gilles Deleuze suggests that this condition results from a long and problematic philosophical legacy; and that such a view of thinking as a given severely limits the real possibilities of thinking – both in terms how thinking is conceived and how it is practiced.

In this article I outline the aforementioned legacy and speculate on ways to proceed from Deleuze’s provocation to think thinking directly, with the key processes of “forgetting” and “questioning” as points of focus. The result is a discussion of the efficacy of certain manners of thinking illustrated through reflections on both my own practice and examples from the design studio.

Read the full article online at: https://drawingon.org/Issue-01-10-Thinking-Design