Emerging Methods in Environmental Design and Planning - Tapa blanda

"This is a book about tools rather than solutions; means rather than ends. Ably edited by Gary Moore, it presents the papers and proceedings of a conference on design methodology in 1968, sponsored by the Design Methods Group; some thirty papers together with nine commentaries on them, by Americans and Britons, with a strong although not exclusively academic emphasis."The authors all try, more or less explicitly, to make public the design process, to clarify what the designer does, not only in order to explain his efforts to others but also to make him accessible to the possible contributions of others. This potential dialogue is particularly important now, when complex designs, offering valid solutions, may be rejected because their programs cannot be communicated or understood."--"Progressive Architecture"

A major part of the volume is devoted to presentations and evaluations of specific new methods. Some areas are covered in depth--for example, building layout models, problem structuring, and computer-aided design--while others, necessarily because of the tremendous range of research under way, are limited to only two or three representative reports. To assist the reader, each section of the volume begins with a brief introduction and is concluded by a summary and commentary. Evaluations of current research and outlooks for the future are offered by such leaders in planning and architecture as John P. Eberhard, Aaron Fleisher, Bernard Frieden, J. Christopher Jones, Horst Rittel, Michael Brill, Paul O. Roberts, Jr., Daniel Brand, and Charles W. Rusch.Although most of the papers involve some application of computers, it would be wrong to imply that the book was only computer applications to design. The focus is on all methods for the solution of medium- and large-scale environmental problems, not just computer methods--however, where necessary to implement specific methods, computer programs and systems are introduced and discussed fully.First published under the title, "Emerging Methods in Environmental Design and Planning."