RBV BW$

Product design management: an annotated bibliography Patrick Noon and Timothy Warner, Go.r, Aldershot, Hans, UK (1988) 212 pages, £25.00

The title of this book provides a precise description of its contents. A total of 710 references are listed, most with a brief indication of the topics that each addresses. The book is divided into 11 sections which have been chosen with some skill u the usefulness of a bibliography de- pends to a large extent on the logic behind the grouping of references. By and large, these references are where one would expect to fred them.

The section headings start with 'Design management: issues and arguments' and move on to cover design and competitiveness, corpo- rate strategy, corporate identity, le- gal aspects, managing design (subdi- vided into various key activities), design education and industry and, finally, insights into design techni- ques for managers. Perhaps this sec- tion should be at the beginning of the book. Placing it at the end seems to reinforce the notion that whilst man-

agers must do better at managing design, they needn't be expected to know very much about the methods and processes of design.

In their introduction, the authors say that their aim has been to bring together the growing amount of liter- ature on the subject of design man- agement. Intentionally, only product work is considered, not graphics, packaging or other specialisms - - this seems unnecessarily restrictive since there are many overlaps and common principles. However, with- in their brief, they have done a good job; this reviewer can see no signifi- cant omissions of publications avail- able at the time the bibliography was compiled. If anything, there has

been insufficient pruning of dated or inconsequential items - - but the na- ture of the bibliography is that it is intended to be a listing rather than a critical appraisal of sources; even the most obscure reference might be en- lightening to someone.

Who might that someone be? The book is "intended to be relevant to designers, managers, and teachers and students of the management of design". Certainly, every serious stu- dent of design or business ought to spend some time considering the management of design and this book represents an excellent starting point. For that reason, it would be disappointing if it did not find its way into most libraries in further and higher education.

Mark Oakley

Design strategies in architecture: an approach to the analysis of form

Geoffrey H Baker, van Nostrand Reinhold, New York (1989) 285 pages

This clearly written and well illus- trated book includes two main parts, each with several sections. The first part presents the author's viewpoint on architecture, which he interprets as a unique cultural and historical product that is different from other aesthetic artefacts. Baker maintains that the study of extant buildings and settings can help to identify the underlying principles of geometrical and symbolic orders. He claims that buildings ought to respond to the site conditions, functional requirements and the culture of those who inhabit them. The second part presents and applies an analytical method for the study of extant townscapes and indi- vidual buildings. This method is meant to discover the primary spatial (e.g., visual and volumetric), the functional (e.g., circulation) and the structural parameters inherent in the built environment. Baker states that

these parameters are examined with reference to the purposes of build- ings and "the kind of symbolic imag- ery which the building seeks to ex- press" (13 64). Where appropriate, Baker notes that cultural, technolo- gical and economic factors ought to be examined.

The analytical studies presented in part two are grouped into four con- cemed with townscapes (including the monastic complex at Assisi, Italy; Warkworth, England; the Campo and Cathedral of Siena; and the Piazza San Marco in Venice) and those concerned with buildings (in- cluding the Town Hall at Saynatsalo by Alvar Aalto; the Atheneum at New Harmony, USA; and the pro- ject for an extension to the National Gallery in London by James Stirl- ing). The presentation of these ex- amples confn-ms that Baker is much more concerned with the visual com- position of the built environment, especially its volumes, geometric lay- out, visual sequences and pedestrian paths, than with the cultural, tech- nological and economic factors he treats in a cursory fashion. In my opinion, this is disconcerting, be- cause the method of study he prop- oses does not extend (or even ack- nowledge) the seminal contributions of authors such as Gordon Cullen I. Moreover, Baker's approach tacitly accepts that the human experience of the built environment can be studied in terms of visual perception: con- currently he ignores the auditory, olefactory and tactile experience of places, which are important in each of the historical settings he examines in part two. Baker's method also overlooks much recent contempor- a ry r e s e a r c h b y a r c h i t e c t s , archaeologists and historians who have developed methods for the study of the spatial organization of the built environment 2. While some of these contributions are more ex- haustive than that proposed in this book, I think it is fair to claim that no comprehensive analytical method for studies of the built environment

Vol II No 2 April 1990 121

BOOKS RBVXBW$

(in terms of all its dimensions) exists today. Such a method would also need to account for explicit societal parameters, particularly political and economic factors such as the goals and intentions of the decision- makers who formulate briefs for architects and urban designers. Un- fortunately, these dimensions are missing from this book.

References

C u l l e n , G Townscape, The Architectural Press, London (1961) There are many contributions includ- ing Hillier and Hanson, and Stead- man. For an interesting overview re- fer to the following special issue: Boast, R B and Steadman, J P (Eds) 'Analysis of building plans in history and prehistory' Environment and Planning B Vol 14 No 4 (1987)

Roderick J Lawrence

Theory of technical systems: a total concept theory for engineering design V Hubka and W E Eder, Springer Verlag GmbH & Co KG, Berlin (1988) 310 pages, DM 128.00

This book is the English version of Theorie Technischer Systeme pub- fished in German in 1984. Compris- hag 12 chapters in all, it takes a highly formalized, highly structured approach to engineering and techni- cal processes which, although com- prehensive, appears somewhat com- plex and scrambled.

For example, chapter 2 'Needs - - Demands' commences with technical requirements and concludes with 'Design to fulfill human needs' - - possibly the wrong way round. Chapter 6 - - 'Classification of Tech- nical Systems (Systematics)' - - pro- fers a classification system which is systematic but complied somewhat randomly (i.e., Function, Original- ity, Difficulty, etc.) Are these topics

a sound basis for a classification sys- tem anyway? The graphics of the process models used convey little to the reader - - chapter 5, 'Technical Systems', is a good example.

Engineering design appears in the title, yet in the book some 200 plus pages elapse before it appears again and then to give a model to the design process! Perhaps the book should have commenced with this chapter.

To summarize, the book and its contents seem detached from design in practice - - although its contents can be retrofitted to modern design process, assuming the reader knows what these are. Perhaps its main failing is that it makes little or no reference to Japanese practices, and other work such as quality function deployment and Taguchi methods, which have been around for some years. Thus the book is not up to date. It is also very much concerned with mechanical engineering and not engineering per se; words such as electronic or integrated circuit do not appear in the index.

All in all, this is a confusing book. It will appeal to design academics of the mechanical machine element school, but it is definitely not a book for the design practitioner in com- petitive markets.

S Pugh

Engineering design: better results through operations research methods Reuven R Levary, North Holland Publishers, The Netherlands (1988) 713 pages, £.52.71

Operations research (OR) attempts the introduction of methods of mathematics and of natural sciences into executive decision-making. Op- elations research is a body of analy- tical tools designed for maximizing certain wanted consequences, or, on

the other hand, for minimizing cer- tain unwanted ones. It was intended primarily for top management deci- sions. But why not use these methods in searching for the opti- mum decision, policy or design?

The book aims to stimulate in- terest in the application of OR to engineering design. For this purpose it has been divided into two large sections.

Chapters 1 to 3 (about 25% of the content) introduce OR. A brief over- view of OR is given in chapter 1 and that of the mathematical program- ruing techniques often used in opti- mization in chapter 2. Special atten- tion is devoted to nonlinear, geomet- ric and integral programming. The problem of assessment and managing risks is covered by chapter 3.

The application of OR methods is dealt with in chapters 4 to 8 (about 70% of the content). Four different engineering branches are used for the demonstration. The optimum design of structures using mathema- tical programming techniques is stu- died in chapter 4. Chapter 5 de- scribes optimization procedures in preliminary design in aerospace en- gineering. The possibilities of the application of OR in chemical plants are discussed in chapter 6 and those in mining engineering in chapter 7. Chapter 8 demonstrates that special technical systems can profit from OR: fins, building systems subject to strong earthquakes, computer com- munication networks and computer systems. Unfortunately, the area of mechanical engineering has been omitted.

The book will provide guidance for selecting the fight method and procedure to engineering problems. But this does not mean that the design engineer has to perform cal- culations. The book only intends to inform the design engineer of the possibilities of OR and of the value of using OR techniques in engineer- ing design. Engineering design prob- lems can best be mastered by a team composed of engineers, operation re-

122 DESIGN STUDIES