Unfolding Values In Places, Spaces, and Paces: Service Systems Thinking and Architectural Theory
Channel: David Ing
Date: 2015-06-30

Service systems thinking has been proposed as a label that combines (i) systems thinking; (ii) the SSMED (Service Science, Management, Engineering and Design) vision; (iii) the generative pattern language theory underpinning Christopher Alexander's life work; and (iv) multiple perspectives open collaboration enabled through contemporary collaborative Internet technologies such as federated wiki.  

One motivation for this new thinking is a promise of better service systems in the future.  Towards this promise, we propose to learn inductively from the architecting of built environments.  

An unfolding is a dynamic configuration that acts to generate form.  The phenomenon for man-made artifacts is similar to that with plant morphogenesis and embryology.  

Value is dynamic, with access consciousness ex-ante and ex-post, and phenomenological consciousness in lived experience.  

Places, spaces and paces trade off between scale, scope, speed and acceleration.  

As a base case for learning, pattern language and the combining of systems of centers are explored.  The building Eishin campus described in Alexander's "The Battle for Life and Beauty on the Earth" is outlined as a way of generating wholeness in practice.  

Slides are available at http://coevolving.com/commons/20150228-unfolding-values-in-places-spaces-and-paces