Design as Metaphor

Abstract

In the scope of the 2013 IDA Congress Istanbul, which was cancelled due to “force majeure”, it was proclaimed that the Organizing Committee preferred to write the theme of the congress, that is “design dialects”, within quotation marks since it was used as a metaphor. Following this remark, the Committee alluded to the legend of Babel and how human beings came to speak different languages. The legend had it that, wrote the Committee, the Babylonians set out to construct a great tower since they shared a common language enabling them to do, make and produce without limitations. Afterwards, the God, being displeased by such endeavour, impaired human beings’ ability to create by destroying their common tongue and turned it into multiple, incomprehensible dialects. This shattering of one single language into several different ones, confused Babylonians and paralyzed their purpose. Even though not being an argumentative person myself, I would like to open the topic of 2013 IDA Congress Istanbul as a discussion in three interrelated parts. Firstly, I will propose employing “design as metaphor” rather than “design dialects” as the title of the paper suggests. Secondly, I will discuss Kojin Karatani’s phrase “architecture as metaphor” whilst juxtaposing it with that of “design” aided by Bruno Latour’s insights on the concept of design. Relating the first and the second moves to each other, I finally will suggest that “design dialects as a metaphor” still stays within the limits of “architecture as metaphor” but not that of “design”. I will introduce Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a means to understand and analyse the human-centeredness of both “design dialects” and “architecture” as metaphors.