Non-Design
“Non-Design” is a term proposed by Diana Agrest in her essay “Design versus Non-Design” to describe objects and environments that are the products of unconscious “design”, such as the vast “random” collection of the “units of meaning” or “sign-fragments”1 that constitute the urban-scale built environment. Distinct both from conscious, intentionally “Designed” objects and from products of accident or nature (Not Designed), a Non-Designed object, environment or system is one that has been built through (human) agency, but which is being studied at a scale (spatial or temporal) which removes the consciousness of any single human designer from consideration. Thus, settlements or vernacular architectural schemes (Architecture without Architects)2 may be analyzed as Non-designed products of large, long-spanning forces of climate and or social culture. In her essay, Agrest suggests that the (urban) realm of the “Non-Designed” holds potential as a site of semiotic exploration of the many different “cultural systems” (Design-culture is one such system) that go into its production. Similarly, Rem Koolhaas’ essay “Enabling Architecture” illustrates the city as a collection of buildings, yet also an entity distinct and aloof from the singular object of the (avant-garde) building which insists on its individuality.3 Culture, Agrest writes, is a mode of social discourse of signs (and meanings) directed towards the public. As a form of cultural production, Architectural design is a society’s production of meaning, and the ‘random’ aggregation of architecture that is the urban environment therefore also contains “aleatory plays of meaning” to be read. In Agrest’s model, everything of the built environment is read as a product of either “design” or “non-design”. Analysis of the built world through this binary categorization will, Agrest posits, allow for 1) the elucidation of the cultural systems which interrelate at varying intensities to produce the objects (called “texts”) of the built environment, 2) An understanding of these cultures’ relative differences; the levels of specificities of ideological code which characterize a text, 3) An understanding of the dynamic “active” relationships that operate between cultural systems; specifically the ways that metaphor and metonym are used in design culture to link cultural systems to produce meaning.