مسئله طراحی

Problem statement: 

The initial phase of design is a complex, crucial, and ambiguous stage. Researchers suggest that designers rely on very simplistic thoughts at the onset of design to narrow down the chain of possible solutions, referred to as primary generators. Primary generators have various sources, one of which is cross-disciplinary references; cinema, in particular, provides a vast array of unexplored spaces. Therefore, the question of this study is: how can cinematic works be considered a source for the formation of primary generators?

This study aims to explore the role of cinema as a formative source of primary generators, thus establishing a credible resource to facilitate the initial design step, which often faces numerous complexities.

The present study first elucidates the concept of primary generators based on existing theoretical discussions in library sources. It then employs qualitative research methods and content analysis of sequences from selected cinematic works to assess the potential of cinema as a source of primary generators.

After gaining insight into the concept of primary generators, a categorization was provided, along with theoretical evidence from cinematic texts for each category. Four distinct viewpoints were adopted based on this categorization, including existential (human life), metaphorical-philosophical, environmental, and formal aspects, with examples from cinematic works presented for each. These findings demonstrate that cinema is a significant source of primary generators and can inspire a wide range of primary generators.

The concept of design is associated with the notion of constraint as a limiting factor, and the search for the constraint in the design process is essential in design research. This study applies the ontological method to define the domain and scope of constraints, their classes and subclasses, and how to apply them. We concluded that there are two types of constraints in design: inside the designer’s mind or internal constraint and outside it or external constraint. Each of these is classified into two subclasses: internal constraints can be divided into deduced and subject constraints, and external constraints are categorised into imposed and intrinsic constraints. In the end, we proposed a model that shows that designers can identify, choose, manage, and even generate constraints in the design process to facilitate the restructuring of the design problem, which helps them solve the design problem.

Indeed, every architectural design idea comes from somewhere or is inspired from some points. Thus, there is a source for ideation. Architectural designers are constantly faced with ambiguous and complex situations. Therefore, their minds usually fly to a given point after encountering design problems, and the preparations and requirements of the ideation appear as a function in the design process. Ideation can be involved in all stages in a thinking cycle, including innovation, development, and the realization of an idea. Although there are some essential notions in the architectural design process that are not easily distinguished separately, each of them has its exclusive meaning. Some of these seemingly similar definitions including, an idea, a concept, a primary generator, or an initial generator; and, architectural contributors such as designers, professors, instructors, and the students who are under the education of architecture in an academic institution or university use them a lot. This mentioned issue illuminates the importance of the vital role of ideation in the architectural design process. Besides, providing a worldwide cognition of ideation and its crucial role in the architectural design process can lead researchers to accomplish a variety of comprehensive investigations. After introducing the ideation as an essential activity in the design process, some questions should be answered. For Example, what are the sources of architectural design ideation, and what are their contributions to the process of ideas’ forming? Responding to these mentioned questions, an article entitled “the sources of architectural ideation, focusing on the professional architects’ ideation processes” has already been pursued. The present research, has made an effort to answer the above questions by focusing on the architecture students' ideation process in different academic degrees and years. In this way, a more realistic view of the ideation sources comes in to picture, and it becomes possible to compare the expert and novice designers' performance. For the field studies of this present essay, the ideation of architectural design processes of 121 architecture students of Shahid Beheshti University was examined as the case studies. As the subjects of this statistical analysis, these selected students consisted of the first-year undergraduates to the four-year undergraduates studying in their bachelor’s at that time, and the first-year and the second-year students of master’s degree. After completing the data gatherings, categorizing, and analyzing, the primary sources of ideation among the architectural students were appraised based on the influential factors in idea production. These are the factors assigned to the design problem, and the factors assigned to designers. In other words, it turned out that their ideation sources were divided into two categories of “design problem-oriented factors” and “designer-oriented factors”. Furthermore, their shares were defined after the descriptive and extrapolative statistical analysis of gained data. It showed that the design problems factors have a higher contribution to the idea formation of the students. Although this finding corresponds with the research of the professional architects, among the students, the ratio of the "design problem-oriented factors" to the "designer-oriented-factors" is impressively higher than the expert designers.

Recent design research has shed light on designers thinking and knowledge acquisition mechanisms, design expertise, as well as design education methodologies. Problem Framing is an effective strategy designers employ to manage the complexities of open-ended unstructured design problems. Drawing on the findings of studies conducted for the PhD dissertation of one of the authors, this paper explains definitions and the background of problem framing and its role in the critical junction of problem definition. It explains that by framing a design problem, the designer selects important aspects of the design problem; redefines relations between theses aspects; postulates tentative responses to this new problem; reflects on these responses; assesses the feedbacks of such postulations; and reformulates the problem if necessary. Problem framing thus becomes the primary mental representation of the problem for the designer, which influences the subsequent design process.

The design process proceeds spatial formation and embraces retrofitting, revitalization, preservation, degree of life, and prosperity. Designers strive to create novel good-looking forms compatible with the environment considering human being, culture of the society, norms, behaviors, and characteristics of each community and ethnicity. The design problematics in rural fabric starts to complicate when traditional forms and designerly novelty are both equally significant. In many cases, there is a gap between already existing environment and the rather new expectations of individuals and groups residing in these rural fabrics. This problem can be considered as a specific problem to be addressed by decision-makers.
The initiation of the problem-solving design process requires appropriate understanding of design problem by the designer. When the problem is well defined and the data gathering method is clear, finding a solution is straightforward. However as the information about the problem becomes more extensive, shortcomings in knowledge will surface. Rural design problems are environmentally wicked and the design process requires a relevant understanding of design problematics by the designer. However, in real design circumstances, however, not all design problems are initially well defined and is very unlikely for all the factors influencing the design to be clarified and analyzed at the beginning of the design process.
In Rural design process, problems surface as studies focus on partial solutions to resolve specific issues. Conventional designerly problem seeking and solving, focuses on very specific issues in an analytic reductionist manner. This rarely leads to appropriate identification of the factors affecting design and analysis of the issues relevant to the rural design decision making. In addition, the result of partial solutions on other design issues is often neglected. It appears that this issue is rooted in lack of awareness and insufficient knowledge of problem seeking and problem solving in the design process by design practitioners.
The present research sets out to investigate the nature of problems challenging designers during the design process and their various properties. In addition, factors modifying the relationship between design problems and solutions are further sought. The main attempt was to descriptively and analytically ways to better identify problems and problem-solving based on the literature review in the context of rural fabric design. Considering the fact that design problems often involve intricate, complicated and irregular structures, the present research focuses on three types of design problems: the well-defined or well-structured, the ill-defined or ill-structured, and the wicked. Some design problems are vaguely-defined type, which can be explored using the spirit of the time and a creative approach.
The results of the present research show that recognizing all issues facing rural design does not necessarily lead to an ideal design but it is necessary for an optimal design. Furthermore, the results also suggest that problem-focused and solution-focused orientations are not totally independent but rather are coevolving processes. Therefore, proposing a solution for specific problems modifies the understanding of other problems involved in the design process. This makes it necessary for problems to be reevaluated at every problem-solving cycle particularly designing in a rural fabric.

Preliminary design ideas, mostly not manifest, are generated in the designers’ minds at the very early stages of their encounter with the design problems. This paper reports a study of the sources from which these ideas are originated, and the corresponding role each source plays in the process of designing. The study was undertaken through the analysis of semi-structured interviews with eight Iranian professional architects about the ideation process of at least one of their design projects. To complement the data gathered through interviews, each interview was followed by a discussion session within a group of graduate architecture students, reflecting on the narratives as well as the documents presented by the participating architects. The interviews as well as the discussion sessions were administered within the framework of a graduate course unit entitled ‘Ideation and the Design Process’, taking a time span of two academic semesters. Graduate students, set in groups of two to five members, contributed to conducting the interviews and further preparing the corresponding written documents. Each group was briefed to interview one of the participating architects, assuring to cover seven key questions of a pre-designed interview pro forma; the questions aiming to uncover the participants’ trains of thought leading to the generation of the central design ideas, and further design developments. In a number of cases, a complementary interview was conducted by the authors to corroborate the written documents prepared by students. A content analysis of the architects’ statements, transcribed from either the interviews or the discussion sessions, was used to identify the role of different sources of design ideas in each design situation. An axial coding of the contributing factors to design ideation, as declared by the architects, verified the central role of the design situation in due course. Three main contributing factors to any design situation were further categorized into ‘the factors brought in by the designer’ and ‘the factors brought in by the design problem’, the latter covering both ‘the site attributes’, and ‘the design brief’ of any design situation. Frequently pronounced by the participating architects, the above mentioned factors can be reckoned as the main sources of design ideation. The findings of the study suggest that the ‘design problems’ were, in sixty percent of the cases, the main source for the design ideation. Design ideas, though, seem to be generated mostly through contemplating the problem situation, i.e. the content and the context of the design task. It was also indicated by the findings that a rating of forty percent of design ideas was evidently brought to the situation by the designers, prior to contemplating the problem variables. In such cases, the designers proved to have drawn on a personal set of cognitive and affective constructs, implying their knowledge and attitude, to come up with the central design ideas. Having acknowledged the changing degree to which any source contributes to idea generation, the paper concludes with a three-fold model which might be used to demonstrate the corresponding roles the sources play in any design situation.