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Unit 7: Overview & Kickoff

Question

How can we reveal the subtle in the obvious, the limitless in the limited?

Summary

Human beings are intrinsically organizers and pattern seekers because there is an apparent drive within us toward wholeness and integration, toward a sense of order, harmony and unity. What’s more, when we perceive such unifying holistic relationships this in turn informs us and gives us deeper insight. Combine this with the fact that everything designers construct impacts how individuals see what they see, necessitates that designers come to understand and embrace this holistic integration of parts and wholes, the operating patterns that produce their holistic properties, or the systems view. This unit will inquire into the basics of pattern and its role in dynamic complexity as well as its creative potential in design.

Learning Objectives

• to introduce (visual) systems thinking to integrate the functions of parts and wholes; — to observe how the limitless can emerge from the limited
• to inquire into the principles of unity in diversity
• to discover and draw out the hidden dimensions within the plain, the obvious.