Design Thinking Book

Design, according to Peter Rowe, is the fundamental means of inquiry by which architects and planners realize and give shape to ideas of buildings and public spaces; yet little sustained attention has been paid to the form of this intellectual activity. His book, Design Thinking, provides a general portrait of designing that characterizes its inherent qualities and sets it apart from other forms of inquiry. It treats multiple and often dissimilar theoretical positions--whether they prescribe forms that are deemed right for "good" architecture and urban design or simply provide procedures for solving problems--as particular manifestations of an underlying structure of inquiry common to all designing.

The book proceeds from detailed observations of designers in action to an examination of the broad frameworks that appear to shape design theory and inform design thinking. Rowe seeks to define the intellectual activity of designing both as rational inquiry, governed by guiding principles and constraints, and as a matter of the conviction and impulse by which design principles are invented and applied. Dozens of illustrations and a number of actual case studies support Rowe's thesis.

Among the topics the book takes up are the salient features of design problems: procedural aspects of design, including varieties of heuristic reasoning; normative positions that shape design thinking; problems of substantiating design doctrines; and problems associated with meaningful interpretation from either a naturalistic or a self-referential view of architecture.