Abstract

The analysis and evaluation of the concepts of scenario and meta-design as a reflection of the liquid modernity (Bauman 2005) are the basis to structure a system of bicycle for the city of the 21st century, supported by semiotic capability.

The first section rush back the meaning of scenario to understand how to use it in design, namely the semantical dimension of scenario as a complex organism that implies addressing the experience of knowledge through cultural symbols and the power of the media. Designing scenarios means to present a whole fragmented into images, a continuous process that fails to take shape. Instead the designer takes on the project, it is the project that takes on the designer, along with the project tools - materials, technologies, semantics - within the designer’s interior and all that is hidden behind appearance. The designer interprets the story of an artefact, using the language of the past (Gadamer 1976) and becoming an interpreter of his reality. To recognize this approach, the text revisits Walter Benjamin’s thinking, based on the individual knowing how to tell a story instead of on the story itself. The concept of ‘story-teller’ (Benjamin 1936) is the designer's ability to create a historical narrative, deforming it by semiotic competence and eventually transforming it into innovation.

The second section presents a case study of a system of bicycle, involving design master students; diverse companies and institutions from the same region and three researchers illustrate this notion.

The thesis is to demonstrate that thinking the reality in different scenarios means employing a phenomenological method, being transformed along with the scenario; one way to interpret the relationship of the individual in the liquid modernity transformed into images. Design enables the city’ scenarios to be an image hypothesis, something ever renewable and embryonic. While image, a scenario consists of a system of layers ready to be experienced by the self while using a bicycle.

1. Introduction

Since the 60’s, the nature of the city’s project became an arbitrary aggregation, due to major contradictions and oscillations characterizing the western reality. The design of the city was manifest as answer to a new way of thinking, as image for the mass society. Designers chose discontinuity before continuity among things. This regarded benefiting the continuous discussion, change and renovation characterizing the 60’s. In a period of continuous renovation as the liquid modernity (Bauman 2005), the constructive order in the project of the city’s re-evaluated constitutive elements and values. The projectual choice regarded the individual and the reality as active actors co-intervening in their respective transformation processes, constituting a step forward in the open process relating all (people, information, time, culture) that interacts incessantly in each reality.

In the 70’s, according to thinkers such as Jean Baudrillard, Umberto Eco and Mario Perniola, the world was transforming into a repository of dangerous images. Jean Baudrillard, for instance, addressed the new problems generated by the means of communication: “what else do the media dream of besides creating the event simply by their presence? Everyone decries it, but everyone is secretly fascinated by this eventuality. Such is the logic of simulacra, it is no longer that divine predestination (…)” (Baudrillard 1994: 55). As if the application of the means of communication to the city were a mere denotative exercise. Other authors such as Maurizio Vitta, Mary Douglas, Baron Isherwood, Andrea Branzi and António Petrillo, on the contrary, considered the image excess, characterizing reality since the end of the 60’s, to be able to become an advantage for the experience of knowledge. As advocated by Margolin: “through the power of communications media, and particularly advertising, images become a persuasive means of motivating people to act“. (Margolin 1989: 11). This meant namely that the exchange of goods was mostly regarded as a symbolic and affective process.

This text addresses the second hypothesis. As defended by Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood (2004), it regards interpreting the consume relations (mirror of reality that is also individual reality) as connections between objects and users. The objects transform into interpreters, providing communication with the user and enhancing the relationship among individuals. As if the objects, enlarging their secondary role (Eco 1984), were also suited for the act of thinking, transformed into mediators for an experiential, interpretative and continuous interaction with the users.

Applied to design this means the symbolic process allows interpreting objects as carriers of memories through complex and mutating individuals living in a contradictory and metamorphic reality. According to Maurizio Vitta, it means “(…) the designer’s centrality is confirmed because the consumption of the use-object requires that it be continually transformed while it remains faithful in substance to its original function; and the task of expressing the cultural, aesthetic, or semiological values that interact behind that transformation is the designer’s specific duty.” (Vitta cit in Margolin 1989: 11-12). The image excess is interpreted as a moment for reflection, to think discontinuity, in the sense of de-construing to construe again, being on the edge of something as a scenario. The project methodology relates to the philosophical thought to question and transform itself, depending on the cultural, social and economic changes of reality. This continuous transformation of concepts determines a permanent development of project methodology as a technique that explains the method in design.

The connection between the project methodology and the concept of scenario can generate projects in the city. However, the city is a very complex organism to try to evaluate it as a whole (Alexander 1968). So, in order to achieve the understanding of a system like the city, this study analyse one of its parts. This research is focus oriented to analyze and evaluate the theme of bicycles as they are an image of the today’s cities and widely used in cities. Bicycles, like people, become crossbred, hybrid and customised, as a marker of different settings as equipment scenarios.

2. The Basis

Etymologically, the term scenarios derives from Latin and has different meanings, such as:

1. Its full definition - “(…) 3: a sequence of events especially when imagined; especially: an account or synopsis of a possible course of action or events (…);

2. Its origin - “(…) from Latin scaenarium place for erecting stages, from scaena stage (…)”

3. An example – “(…) a possible scenario would be that we move to the city.” [1]

In this study a sequence of events imagined could mean a shift towards reality consists of thorough, independent and innovative action that is presented to the individual in a written motion. When the designer understands the concept of scenario as a cinematographer of images (Sartre 1936), and relates this concept in design bicycles, he is presenting solutions that interact with reality. It is a competent pattern-system (Alexander 1968) that relates to the requests and the continuous changes that happen in the environment, adding meaning to human being. If the concept of scenario can be interpreted as a dynamic system patterns, changing and connotative, the equipment must express a cultural pattern. The continuous display of related images allows the transformation of the place through the scenario bike system. As if the bicycle was a possible mirror to reflect the images of the individual in place. These are images that offer the user, providing him an animated show. That is, if he is an active user that interacts with the bike, then each image is automatically extended for another and so on. A complex object manifests a diverse nature. Consequently, the scenario/bicycle is presented as a sequence of images, always moving. This means that the same portion where the image sequence happens that may give rise to a new sequence of pictures of the same or another reference. The place predisposes to renew itself naturally to the user to actively participate in the scenario.

So, using the abdution (Pierce 1932) as project methodology, the concept of scenario can be interpreted as a practice to design patterns (materials, technologies, semantics) by design.

The association of the word scenario to a practice of design patterns is possible to produce. Firstly, because this association is proposed to be held by a weak and diffuse subject as design. On the other hand, because ontologically, considering the 'being' of scenario’s word with an existence, can not mean the ontological connotation of the traditional term of scenario. This term may have a connotation, linking the ‘being’ of the word scenario in the reality the designer wants interpret; that is, now (Benjamin 1932). If the patterns operate with a system, then the system patterns, which define the bicycle while setting, can be interpreted as bike tools that change continuously. This means that the significance of the pattern should be equal to the meaning of patterns system that defines the bicycle. The scenario involves the user, manifesting itself in a cultural message; the result of the relationship between all patterns - new signs and also old signs - that make up the city. As Gadamer states “there can be no doubt that the great horizon of the past, out of which our culture and our present live, influences us in everything we want, hope for, or fear in the future. History is only present to us in light of our futurity.” (Gadamer 1976 : 8). The interpretation of the historical tradition depends on the designer's ability to establish relationships with reality, that is, depends on its ability to dispose of the historical narrative, to know being in the universe. As Walter Benjamin states “a story does not aim to convey an event per se, which is the purpose of information; rather, it embeds the event in the life of the story-teller in order to pass it on as experience to those listening. I thus bear the trace of the story-teller, much the way an earthen vessel bears the trace of the potter’s hand.” (Benjamin 2003: 316). Today, the proposal of thinking tradition in discontinuous mode and as a cultural vehicular of the past can be interpreted as the intuition of Walter Benjamin to break the story. This is a gesture likely to establish a different relationship with the past. A gesture achievable through interpretation; far from the traditional proposal. The designer that, through the project, tells the story of an archetype using the language of the past, becomes a maker of tradition, an interpreter who gives a new lease of life to the archetype, but now narrated differently and updated way.

3. The Case Study: RaiOOO and the concept of scenario as the power of design to create a bicycle

To argue that the concept of scenarios can be interpreted as a system of bicycle, we analyze the use of the scenarios concept as system of bicycle in a Design research project/teaching, involving 18 Design master students from the Master in Integrated Design course of the Polytechnic Institute of Viana do Castelo, Portugal, that were coordinated by professors Ermanno Aparo and Manuel Ribeiro. Specifically, the RaiOOO project is an opportunity to experiment and to demonstrate design’s abilities to materialise product systems. It was intended for the students to implement these systems to enhance new features interacting as new urban models.

Figure 1. Draft hypotheses for the Raiooo project. Source: Joana Ferreira.

In terms of implementation, the project team developed the prototype of a tricycle with an electric motor connected to sensors on the pedals. Namely, the RaiOOO project allowed master students to relate with different productive entities. On the one hand, the RaiOOO project intends to demonstrate that connexions between the academic context and companies can be the key factor to create sustainability. This action involves entities and businesses that normally would have remained on the margins, if not totally excluded from the processes of conception. On the other hand the RaiOOO project focus oriented to a pedal vehicle, with a high capacity to adapt to changing scenarios validate the possibility that the experimentation, in the universities, can become a crucial tool for the identification of new models of business development in the area of urban mobility. The idea arises from a series of stimuli received and collected within the world of urban mobility, taking into account trends expressed in a society devoted to the inclusion should promote a new concept of urban cycling within social groups that normally this are excluded. A bicycle can bring either individual, either high and low technology, high and low materials. It means, as an image of the city, a bicycle produce values conferring a product capable of integrating scenarios, leading to a new way to experience the city. Methodologically, the challenge was to bond three players (the students and the companies), promoting design research projects and also the connection among distinct knowledge fields in the threshold between teaching and profession.

During six months, students and businessmen worked together both at school and in the companies, investigating and outlining their proposals for targeted hypotheses of system of bicycles. This process equated new demands from users, such as purchasing a service/product not requiring the need/obligation to enter the distribution level, but its threshold. This vehicle makes use of materials rather unusual in the context of the bicycle. Although, these materials are common in the Portuguese culture, such as the wood, the cork and the leather. Added to these materials, the bicycle uses the aluminium, the ecological plastic and mechanical components, typical form the traditional bicycles. This action generates not only a cross-cultural product, but also a sustainable product.

Figure 2. Patten accessories for the Raiooo project. Source: Joana Ferreira.

Specifically, the project team resorts to craft production, seed production and industrial printing 3d, which enhance the process of creating leading him to the conception of a concept as a clear example of applied research to production. The tricycle shows a structural shell made from two plates of birch plywood bolted to two aluminium brackets that incorporate one hand the box of the other direction and the axis that goes up from the saddle to the pedals. The structural shell serves as a container for the electrical (battery, controller and cables); the shell is then closed on the perimeter by the cork agglomerate. The fork and the steering wheel are made by a process of laminating and bonding pressure of different kinds of wood; the front wheel is equipped with a 250w motor activated by a sensor located behind the crown of the pedals. The rear suspension is made from a block of two wheels with differential that facilitates the distribution of the driving force. Finally, the tricycle have been placed with a series of accessories: a basket in plywood, wood and leather in the back, two leather bags under the steering wheel, a front fender in wood and a saddle in agglomerated cork. The project is presented as a possible bike sharing that, making use of its features, can be inserted in street circuits as an alternative transport.

Figure 3. The Raiooo project. Source: Joana Ferreira and João Teixeira.

4. Conclusion

This investigation, stemming from the scenario concept ambiguity, intends to emphasize design method as process to provide knowledge in two dimensions: product/service and interaction/experience. To include interpretation as a method for design means qualifying the design process, analyzing and pondering the relationship of the designer in context to understand how both, designer and context are transformed.

The designer assessing the cultural value has the predisposition to reach an innovative and sustainable response. Innovative solution because the designer, through interpretation, accepts time fragmentation and defines the answer including the cultural factor, becoming an ever-renovated solution. A sustainable answer because the process benefits from factors crisscrossing context, as time, communication or complexity, enabling interpretation while design process to be a cyclic method; recyclable and therefore sustainable.

A cognitive and dialectical process because being a path open to contrary and contradictory ideas, it becomes an innovative process conducting to other ideas. A vast process whose product’s final quality will depend on the strength of the relationship among the parts constituting the bicycle’s product system. The designer as interpreter of the city, namely the bicycle as a pattern, takes on the scenarios as a complex object that manifests a diverse nature, presenting a sequence of images, always moving. This is as an opportunity to interpret the complexity and ambiguity that characterize the liquid modernity.  Therefore, the concept of ‘story-teller’ is interpreted as the designer's ability to create a historical narrative, deforming it by semiotic competence and eventually transforming it into innovation.

The alternative to assess and evaluate all appearances of the nature of the two concepts will allow him the right to choose when relating the individual to the world.

In this sense, it is a productive action in which design works with other disciplines, design tendering architecture to interfere in the true reality, complex and difficult to define, instead of design operating on a dream-like reality. As culture carrier of meaning, design contributes towards preserving the cities’ identity and also to uphold emotions in people's lives.

References

ALEXANDER, Christopher. 1977. A pattern language: towns, buildings, Constructions. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. (1st edition 1968).

BAUMAN, Zygmunt. 2005. Modernità liquida. Bari: Laterza. (1^st edition 2000).

BAUDRILLARD, Jean. 1994. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press. (1^st edition 1981).

BENJAMIN, Walter. 2008. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. New York: Penguin Adult. (1^st edition 1936).

BENJAMIN, Walter. 2003. Selected papers, 1938 – 1940, volume 4. In Howard EIland and Michael W. Jenning (Ed.): New York. Harvard College.

DOUGLAS, Mary & Baron ISHERWOOD. (2004) O Mundo dos Bens: para uma antropologia do consumo. Editora: UFRJ. (1^st edition 1979).

ECO, Umberto. 1984. Semiotics and the philosophy of language. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

GADAMER, Hans-Georg. 1976. Philosophical Hermeneutics. Berkeley: University of California Press.

MARGOLIN, Victor. 1989. “Introduction”. In Victor Margolin (Ed.) Design discourse: history, theory, criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 3-30. (1^st edition 1984)

PEIRCE, Charles Sanders. 1958. “Elements of Logic”. In WEISS, Paul. Collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, volume 2. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (1^st edition 1932).

SARTRE, J. P. (1988). A Imaginação. Lisbon: Difel. (1^st edition 1936).

Webography

ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA. Encyclopædia Britannica Online: [http://www.britannica.com].

MERRIAM-WEBSTER DICTIONARY. Merriam-Webster Online: [http://www.merriam-webster.com].