ABSTRACT
In 1965 we attended a lecture in the Cambridge School of Architecture in which Alex Reid confidently predicted the death, because of computing, of the design professions. They are not dead yet. But in the 1960s, encouraged by a positivist optimism about the potential “intelligence” of computers, Britain saw several attempts to construct an overarching theory of design and thus to systematize the act of designing into a partly or wholly auto matic “design method. ” Christopher Alexander (1964) and John Christo pher Jones (1970), for example, enthusiastically published these attempts, but, soon after their books emerged, rejected these methods. Henrik Gedenryd (1998, pp. 59-60) reported that in 1966 Alexander published an essay explaining why his method did not work, and totally repudiated de sign m ethods as suitable only for “incredibly m undane” problems, adding that “until those people who talk about design methods are actually... try ing to create buildings, I wouldn’t give a penny for their efforts” (Alexan der, 1971); whereas Jones (1970) admitted that “there is not much evidence that they have been used with success, even by their inventors.... The usual difficulty is that of losing control of the design situation once one is commit ted to a systematic procedure which seems to fit the problem less and less as designing proceeds” (see also, Jones, 1977).
