RBV BW$

Product desi gn
management: an
annotated
bibliography
Patrick Noon and Timothy Warner,
Go.r, Aldershot, Hans, UK (1988)
212 pages, 25.00
The title of this book provides a
precise description of its contents. A
total of 710 references are listed,
most with a bri ef indication of the
topics that each addresses. The book
is divided into 11 sections which
have been chosen with some skill u
the usefulness of a bibliography de-
pends to a large extent on the logic
behind the grouping of references.
By and large, these references are
where one woul d expect to fred
them.
The section h e a d i n g s start w i t h
' Desi gn management : issues and
arguments' and move on to cover
design and competitiveness, corpo-
rate strategy, corporate identity, le-
gal aspects, managing design (subdi-
vided into various key activities),
design education and industry and,
finally, insights into design techni-
ques for managers. Perhaps this sec-
tion should be at the beginning of the
book. Placing it at the end seems to
reinforce the notion that whilst man-
a ge r s must do better at managing
design, they needn' t be expected to
know very much about the methods
and processes of design.
In their introduction, the authors
say that their aim has been to bring
together the growing amount of liter-
ature on the subject of design man-
agement. Intentionally, only product
work is considered, not graphics,
packaging or other specialisms - -
this seems unnecessarily restrictive
since there are many overlaps and
common principles. However, with-
in their brief, they have done a good
job; this reviewer can see no signifi-
cant omissions of publications avail-
able at the time the bibliography was
compiled. I f anything, there has
been insufficient pruning of dated or
inconsequential items - - but the na-
ture of the bibliography is that it is
intended to be a listing rather than a
critical appraisal of sources; even the
most obscure reference might be en-
lightening to someone.
Who might that someone be? The
book is "intended to be relevant to
designers, managers, and teachers
and students of the management of
design". Certainly, every serious stu-
dent of design or business ought to
spend some time considering the
management of design and this book
r epr es ent s an excel l ent st ar t i ng
point. For that reason, it would be
disappointing if it did not find its way
into most libraries in further and
higher education.
Mark Oakley
Des i gn strategies in
architecture: an
approach to the
analysis of form
Geoffrey H Baker, van Nostrand
Reinhold, New York (1989) 285 pages
This clearly written and well illus-
trated book includes two main parts,
each with several sections. The first
part presents the author' s viewpoint
on architecture, which he interprets
as a unique cultural and historical
product that is different from other
aesthetic artefacts. Baker maintains
that the study of extant buildings
and settings can help to identify the
underlying principles of geometrical
and symbolic orders. He claims that
buildings ought to respond to the site
conditions, functional requirements
and the culture of those who inhabit
them. The second part presents and
applies an analytical met hod for the
study of extant townscapes and indi-
vidual buildings. This met hod is
meant to discover the primary spatial
(e.g., visual and volumetric), the
functional (e.g., circulation) and the
structural parameters inherent in the
built environment. Baker states that
these parameters are examined with
reference to the purposes of build-
ings and "t he kind of symbolic imag-
ery which the building seeks to ex-
press" (13 64). Where appropriate,
Baker notes that cultural, technolo-
gical and economic factors ought to
be examined.
The analytical s t u d i e s presented in
part two are grouped into four con-
cemed with townscapes (including
the monast i c compl ex at Assisi,
It al y; War kwor t h, Engl and; t he
Campo and Cathedral of Siena; and
the Piazza San Marco in Venice) and
those concerned with buildings (in-
cluding the Town Hall at Saynatsalo
by Alvar Aalto; the Atheneum at
New Harmony, USA; and the pro-
ject for an extension to the National
Gallery in London by James Stirl-
ing). The presentation of these ex-
amples confn-ms that Baker is much
more concerned with the visual com-
position of the built environment,
especially its volumes, geometric lay-
out, visual sequences and pedestrian
paths, than with the cultural, tech-
nological and economic factors he
treats in a cursory fashion. In my
opinion, this is disconcerting, be-
cause the met hod of study he prop-
oses does not extend (or even ack-
nowledge) the seminal contributions
of authors such as Gordon Cullen I.
Moreover, Baker' s approach tacitly
accepts that the human experience of
the built environment can be studied
in terms of visual perception: con-
currently he ignores the auditory,
olefactory and tactile experience of
places, which are important in each
of the historical settings he examines
in part two. Baker' s method also
overlooks much recent contempor-
a r y r e s e a r c h b y a r c h i t e c t s ,
archaeologists and historians who
have devel oped met hods for the
study of the spatial organization of
the built environment 2. While some
of these contributions are more ex-
haustive than that proposed in this
book, I think it is fair to claim that
no comprehensive analytical met hod
for studies of the built environment
V o l II N o 2 A p r i l 1 9 9 0 1 2 1
BOOKS RBVXBW$
(in terms of all its dimensions) exists
today. Such a method would also
need to account for explicit societal
parameters, particularly political and
economic factors such as the goals
and i nt ent i ons of t he deci si on-
makers who formulate briefs for
architects and urban designers. Un-
fortunately, these dimensions are
missing from this book.
References
C u l l e n , G Townscape, The
Architectural Press, London (1961)
There are many contributions includ-
ing Hillier and Hanson, and Stead-
man. For an interesting overview re-
fer to the following special issue:
Boast, R B and Steadman, J P (Eds)
'Analysis of building plans in history
and prehistory' Environment and
Planning B Vol 14 No 4 (1987)
Roderick J Lawrence
Theory of technical
systems: a total
concept theory for
engineering design
V Hubka and W E Eder, Springer
Verlag GmbH & Co KG, Berlin
(1988) 310 pages, DM 128.00
This book is the English version of
Theorie Technischer Systeme pub-
fished in German in 1984. Compris-
hag 12 chapters in all, it takes a
highly formalized, highly structured
approach to engineering and techni-
cal processes which, although com-
prehensive, appears somewhat com-
plex and scrambled.
For example, chapter 2 ' Needs - -
Demands' commences with technical
requi rement s and concludes with
' Design to fulfill human needs' - -
possi bl y t he wr ong way r ound.
Chapter 6 - - 'Classification of Tech-
nical Systems (Systematics)' - - pro-
fers a classification system which is
systematic but complied somewhat
randomly (i.e., Function, Original-
ity, Difficulty, etc.) Are these topics
a sound basis for a classification sys-
tem anyway? The graphics of the
process models used convey little to
the reader - - chapter 5, ' Technical
Systems' , is a good example.
Engineering design appears in the
title, yet in the book some 200 plus
pages elapse before it appears again
and then to give a model to the
design process! Perhaps the book
should have commenced with this
chapter.
To summarize, the book and its
contents seem detached from design
in practice - - although its contents
can be retrofitted to modern design
process, assuming the reader knows
what these are. Perhaps its main
failing is that it makes little or no
reference to Japanese practices, and
other work such as quality function
deployment and Taguchi methods,
which have been around for some
years. Thus the book is not up to
date. It is also very much concerned
with mechanical engineering and not
engineering per se; words such as
electronic or integrated circuit do not
appear in the index.
All in all, this is a confusing book.
It will appeal to design academics of
t he mechani cal machi ne el ement
school, but it is definitely not a book
for the design practitioner in com-
petitive markets.
S Pugh
Engineering design:
better results through
operations research
methods
Reuven R Levary, North Holland
Publishers, The Netherlands (1988)
713 pages, .52.71
Operations research (OR) attempts
t he i nt r oduct i on of met hods of
mathematics and of natural sciences
into executive decision-making. Op-
elations research is a body of analy-
tical tools designed for maximizing
certain wanted consequences, or, on
the other hand, for minimizing cer-
tain unwanted ones. It was intended
primarily for top management deci-
si ons. But why not use t hes e
methods in searching for the opti-
mum decision, policy or design?
The book aims to stimulate in-
terest in the application of OR to
engineering design. For this purpose
it has been divided into two large
sections.
Chapters 1 to 3 (about 25% of the
content) introduce OR. A brief over-
view of OR is given in chapter 1 and
that of the mathematical program-
ruing techniques often used in opti-
mization in chapter 2. Special atten-
tion is devoted to nonlinear, geomet-
ric and integral programming. The
problem of assessment and managing
risks is covered by chapter 3.
The application of OR methods is
dealt with in chapters 4 to 8 (about
70% of the content). Four different
engineering branches are used for
the demonstration. The opt i mum
design of structures using mathema-
tical programming techniques is stu-
died in chapter 4. Chapter 5 de-
scribes optimization procedures in
preliminary design in aerospace en-
gineering. The possibilities of the
application of OR in chemical plants
are discussed in chapter 6 and those
in mining engineering in chapter 7.
Chapter 8 demonstrates that special
technical systems can profit from
OR: fins, building systems subject to
strong earthquakes, computer com-
munication networks and computer
systems. Unfortunately, the area of
mechanical engineering has been
omitted.
The book will provide guidance
for selecting the fight method and
procedure to engineering problems.
But this does not mean that the
design engineer has to perform cal-
culations. The book only intends to
inform the design engineer of the
possibilities of OR and of the value
of using OR techniques in engineer-
ing design. Engineering design prob-
lems can best be mastered by a team
composed of engineers, operation re-
122 DESIGN STUDIES