Principle 1.5: Design is Means vs. Ends

—where means are “means to ends” (something that serves another purpose) and ends are “ends in themselves” (something worthwhile in itself).

In this chapter, many, similar dichotomies are introduced: Means vs. ends, function vs. form, pragmatics/functionality vs. aesthetics, art vs. engineering. While reading principle 1.5, specifically, I found myself initially a bit unsatisfied by the exploration of the dichotomy of means vs. ends. As we explored in our conversations in class, even abstract concepts rarely fit into these boxes in a clear and satisfying manner. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the dichotomy in itself is not a useful paradigm for exploring design or the different factors to balance in the design process.

As I was thinking through different designs that I liked for the second portion of this assignment, I found that the things that resonated with me the most, or felt the most emotionally impactful for me were often very flawed, but sentimental in some way. For example, the DC metro, which is my first example, is limited in the areas it covers, is often broken down in some capacity, and feeds into the gentrification of the city. When I imagine the individuals responsible for deciding how it was built, I imagine bureaucrats fighting over land that may have been taken unethically, and likely not valuing the beauty of the enterprise too highly. All the same, it's how I and many others explore and experience the city, all in a somewhat affordable fashion.

Is this artful design? I don't know what the design process looked like, but I could imagine it may have taken place without much focus on form and a great deal of focus on function (though I'm sure there were people whose job it was to care about the aesthetics). I highly doubt anyone would have thought the metro would become an "end unto itself". That being said, I do know that there is now a bar in the city inside of an old metro car. So maybe now it has become a thing of "form" or a purely aesthetic device. It seems like there is an inherent kind of feedback loop between these different dichotomies, which is expressed more in principle 1.16 “Design is a radical synthesis of means and ends into a third type of thing, both useful and beautiful”.

I'm not exactly sure how all this fits into the process of design. It seems unwise to rely on sentimentality and difficult to predict how a design will evolve in connotation over time, but it feels like an important aspect nonetheless.