Making something is not only a mechanical way as a means to achieve a specific practical purpose, but also an organic process that is deeply related to the development of the mind and body of the creator and user. By engaging in making, people simultaneously draw out their own physical and mental potentials, and at the same time, this growth leads to the intrinsic development of society. This organic theory of production has its origins in Aristotle’s theory of poiēsis in ancient Greece. Later, the lineage was carried over to the Disegno theory of the Renaissance and subsequent periods, to William Morris, who was at the origin of modern design, and to the design ideas of Albers and Moholy-Nagy of the Bauhaus. In recent years, there is the generation-degeneration theory by Shutaro Mukai, who developed his own design philosophy based on Goethe’s concept, and the discussions over research-through-design by Freiling and his followers.

In his Physics, Aristotle argued that there are two kinds of motion of things. The first is the mechanistic principle of “technē,” which holds that there is a cause of motion outside the object, and that the object is compelled by that cause to move and change. The other is the organic principle of “physis,” whereby there is a cause of motion inside the object, and the object in question moves and changes autonomously and spontaneously as the latent cause is expressed.

At the same time, Aristotle, in his Poetics, calls mimesis the state in which the subject loses itself and follows the organic principles of nature, and defines “technē poietikē,” the art of making, as the state in which the potentialities of nature are actualized. Therefore, “poiesis” (making) is a technology that processes the object from the outside, but that process is realized in accordance with the “natural” development of the object while assimilating it, so that the potential of the object can blossom as well as the potential of the subject (human beings) involved. In other words, it is something that can be realized in accordance with the “natural” development of the object. Such an art of making was formulated by 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Judgment (1790) as “schöne Kunst,” an art of beauty that imitates natural beauty. In the Romantic and later periods of the 19th century, it was celebrated by thinkers such as Goethe, Schlegel, Schelling, and Hegel as the logic of production that characterized fine art, especially poetry, which was considered at the time to be its quintessence.

In the second half of the 19th century, William Morris in England defined “designing” as a dynamic logic of social formation in which people engaged in manual production interacted and helped each other to develop intrinsically. The Arts and Crafts movement, which originated with Morris, gave birth to the design trends known as Art Nouveau in France, Jugendstil in Germany, and Secession in Austria, all of which were against the mechanical construction logic that had been rampant since the scientific revolution of the 17th century and the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. At the Bauhaus in the 1920s, the two currents of organicism, represented by the concept of poiesis, and mechanism, represented by standardization, scientification, and industrialism, mutually opposed and complemented each other, and through their conflict, the unique development of the modern design was seen and the conflict would be inherited by the Bauhaus and a successor of it, the Ulm School of Design.

In its Greek origins, the concept of poiesis already had a deep relationship with the concept of mimesis, in which one leaves one’s own will and assimilates and moves together with the object. From this emerged the idea of self-organization, in which the subject of production and movement is not man’s will or plan, but the relationship between materials, nature, and living organisms. Maturana and Varela, Chilean biologists, called the process of autonomous generation of order through the continuation of certain actions “autopoiesis,” and proposed their own system theory that operates in a self-referential manner without any external output or input.

Design is not something that is created by the ego within the material, but rather is generated spontaneously and unconsciously out of the autonomous interaction between the material and the organism, and the resulting traces are left as design. What is generated from such autonomous production is not only the product, but also life forms including human beings, their relationships, the system and climate in which they are rooted, and the knowledge that makes their generation possible. Design is then no longer subordinate to human intentions, but rather an activity that frees human beings from their ego and allows them to change and grow from within. (KOGA Toru)

Related Classes

Design Futures Course, Philosophy of Design

References

• Aristotle(2017), On The Art Of Poetry (trans. by Ingram Bywater) , Loki’s Publishing.
• 向井周太郎（2009）『デザイン学 思索のコンステレーション』武蔵野美術大学出版局