ABSTRACT
Some of the forces driving increased collaboration in architecture and design are larger than the design disciplines by significant orders of magnitude. At every turn, we face problems that are simply too big to solve alone. Professor Horst Rittel, the design theorist, coined the term wicked problems to describe these complications that have complex, contradictory, and interdependent variables and are difficult to solve because they are difficult to define.1 Every wicked problem is a symptom of another problem; wicked problems have no solutions: “At best they are only re-solved-over and over again.”2 Examples of wicked problems include sustainable urban development, equity, poverty, homelessness, and food scarcity. Rittel’s work linked design and planning problem solving to politics and revealed that resolving wicked problems requires many people with different viewpoints and areas of expertise.3
