Another one on the recommendation list that a scholar architect friend of mine recommended was Four historical definitions of architecture. Architecture is often pointed to as a grandfather to design, and in other cases is identified as design itself. This book seems like it will be an interesting look at some different perspectives on Western architecture over time. The author covers four main periods and perspectives, architecture as:

• Technē (Greece)
• Mechanical Art (Medieval Europe)
• Disegno (Renaissance Italy)
• Fine Art (18th century Europe)

Architecture from a modern perspective includes six elements, which comprise two manifestations:

• characters (designer, builder, and dweller)
• things (material, drawing, and building)

Reflecting on Instructional Design I can see elements that are related or akin within this description of architecture. In many cases we could also describe three characters. The instructional designer, the instructional developer or technologist (or folks that I used to work with called eLearning Specialists), and a version of the dweller. What I found interesting was Parcell’s explanation that the dweller was not necessarily someone who was going to live or work in the building, but could be. For instructional design, this would allow us to position different dwellers such as the learner, the instructor, the business, the university dept head, etc. In terms of the things we have materials which could be any kind of instructional materials (in a broad sense, the stuff we use to make up instruction), drawings are closely related to what we could call storyboards or templates, and rather than physical buildings we produce the physical manifestations of instruction (buried in this phrasing somewhere is my aversion to being a learning designer, but that post will come some other day).

One thing I found interesting about the description of the designer’s relationship with materials, as described by Parcell, was that the goal was to use materials to their full potential without creating a design that would take the materials beyond what they were intended for or able to perform. I find when it comes to investigating materials in an instructional design context that it can be easy to overestimate the potential of materials, and quite a bit of effort can be spent on trying to bend what you have available to your will.

Parcell addresses the ambiguity of architecture as a noun, and as a discipline. The ambiguity has stretched even further as novel disciplines have been introduced. I might call these modal architecture, {discipline} architecture, such as molecular architecture or computer architecture. Compounding the ambiguity and broader understanding of architecture, Parcell notes that it does not exist in K12 curricula and is only present in certain higher education, giving it a rare and esoteric appeal. However,

as a practice, architecture is defined by government legislation and regulated by professional bodies that determine who is and who is not an architect. By law, only registered architects can make architecture (p. 13).

I know this has come up in Twitter chats and a few blogs posts surrounding the whole Learning Engineer discussion, of which Learning Architect was also pitched as a new job title. Reading this chapter however, looking at the six elements of architecture, I still see a lot of things that the non-architect can meaningfully participate in without having to attempt to claim the titled work.

Parcell uses the construction of a concert hall as a way to provide an example of this type of work, and the six elements of architecture. Here, Parcell introduces the designer in context. In simpler projects the role of the designers includes collecting commission, design, approvals, notates instructions for builders. For more complex projects, the designer could actually be several individuals who complete different, more specialized roles such as the architect, structural engineer, mechanical engineer, interior designers, consultant, etc. This introduces a wide spectrum of who the designer is, with no precise answer. That would have been too easy. But Parcell does provide two descriptions of the task, role, or purpose of what design is (and therefore we can conclude a bit about the design-er):

The design is mainly a composition of forms, assembled in a harmonious way (p. 13)

and

The design responds to the dweller’s objectives but also express the designer’s own character and ambition (p. 13)

I love the elegance of that first description. The second jumped off the page at me likely because of a comment a colleague of mine made this week. A few of us are working on different courses for the same program development (10 ish courses). At the outset I recommended and assisted the program coordinator with creating a framework for the courses. My colleague mentioned at one point that she could see little touches of JR throughout, even though I didn’t personally write any of the framework, it was interesting to see that my ‘flare’ was evident.