Welcome to the Theoria Project, an ongoing exploration into the thinking about doing
Design denotes any intentional activity. Such an activity is initiated by some challenge, requires an idea or theory, is performed with a reason, and completed with a feeling (preferably of satisfaction). The feedback you receive at each stage along the way is what you learn from in order to do something analogous. This site is devoted to making accessible what I have learnt over the last forty odd years that I have been learning, teaching and thinking about design in architecture.
Where to begin? Let’s begin by deconstructing this description of the kind of activity I believe design is.
What makes an intentional activity different from any other kind of activity? An intentional activity is an activity that is undertaken with a reason.
Example: “I am cold, I’m going to put on a nice warm coat.” The assumption here is that ‘I’ (the person uttering the sentence) knows how to deal with feeling cold. A good way to deal with it in some situations is to put on a warm coat. However, there are other options, some more effective than others. ‘I’ could turn on the central heating, light a fire, jump up and down for a while, drink hot tea, snuggle up to my wife, put another blanket over the bed. Each solutions is appropriate to a situation or context. The reason is the bit that makes the challenge (wanting to deal with feeling cold) and the response (putting on a warm coat) harmonize well. Putting on a coat in bed is perhaps not such a great idea, whilst snuggling up to my wife in public could be misinterpreted. So a reason is the thought that makes you do this rather than that. It assumes causal competence and modal competence. (I shall get to those in due course. For now all that is needed is for you to understand causal competence as you knowing what to do to achieve a certain effect and to understand modal competence as knowing how to explore what possibilities there are for any effect and to be able to distinguish which actions are necessary for that effect and which actions are optional)
What about the idea or theory? An idea or theory regarding a challenge is a conviction that this is the right response to that situation. An inspiring idea can come from anywhere and it does not need to account for itself. You can be inspired by anything and in any way. However, when you finally decide to do this rather that that, that is also the moment when the inspired idea becomes a theory and that has to be grounded on proper reasoning preferably using sound evidence.
Example: “The idea for this bridge came to me in a dream.” That may be true, but the designing engineer would not have stopped there. He would have tested the idea given him in the dream against his knowledge of how things work. At that moment what came to him in a dream achieved the status of something that held promise. Then he would have started working the idea out, exploring possible alternatives, doing the necessary calculations… and only if all the parts of the process of designing and building the bridge, the bridge itself and the purpose for which the bridge was built harmonized in the minds of the designer, the builders, the financiers and the municipality, would the bridge be actually built. As such inspiration is free, it can come from anywhere. But as soon as it becomes a reason to make a decision it has to give an account of itself. Inspiration is one element, be it a very crucial one, in a complex constellation of events that fully describe the process of design.
What about the satisfaction? All reasoning has to end at some moment in time, preferably in a decision to do this rather than that. The idea that a reason is a moment of presumed harmony between a challenge and a response allows us to bring feelings into the picture we are building of the reasoning process. If you have decided to do this rather than that and you believe it is the right thing to do in the circumstances, then that belief is accompanied by a feeling of confidence in your decision. This feeling is confirmed if and when it turns out that you were right. That, in turn, gives a feeling of satisfaction. Feelings and reasons work together. Feelings initiate, steer and complete any intentional action. Sometimes the only reason you can come up with to do this rather than that is a feeling that it is the right thing to do. That is where the feeling becomes the reason. This is where things become tricky. You would generally (but not always) prefer your feeling to be the result of having a good reason in the form of clear and reliable evidence that what you propose to do is the best thing to do under the circumstances.
Example: A: “That table is beautifully made”. Q: “What do you mean?” A: “I mean that the pieces making up the table have been well-dimensioned, well-formed and well-joined together and the whole is well-finished to make the table a stable object of use and joy to its user.”
What about the learning? Learning is the processing of feedback. That feeling of satisfaction, or dissatisfaction with what you have done, is justified by the feedback you have been given by the design itself, how it has proven itself to work, or to fail to work, and from others engaging with you and your design. Intentional activity is thoughtful doing and thoughtful doing is another way of describing the process of learning.
OK, that takes care of my preliminary description of what the activity of design entails. We have made a beginning in describing what counts as designing. But to describe what an activity entails is only half of what needs to be done. The other half is to describe how to judge whether the activity was done well. What counts as designing well?
© jacob voorthuis, 2025. Please cite Jacob Voorthuis as the author, The Theoria Project as the title and the page address as the location. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially under the following terms: No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits. Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.