Peer Reviewed Journal via three different mandatory reviewing processes, since 2006, and, from September 2020, a fourth mandatory peer-editing has been added.
The paper concerns representation intended as abstraction of a
model from reality through perception. The relation between
reality and its model is a key issue to design because while the
project is thought on models, it always affects reality, and this
epistemological gap is the reason for many design failures.
In particular, models are adopted in top-down approaches to
abstract only what decision-makers consider useful information
to pursue their objectives. The bottom-up approach, instead,
adopts as model reality itself intended as the total set of physical
stimuli passed intact to agents which react by spontaneously
transforming their environment.
This approach lacking representation proves itself automatically
reflexive and contingent. Nevertheless representations which
make top-down approach strategic make it also rigid and
vulnerable to changing conditions.
The present paper outlines a research path to solve this
contradiction by positing that the two approaches are not
mutually exclusive but the extremes of a scale which can work
as meta-model to regulate the relationship between reality and
model in design activity, thus defining an intermediate design
object which would determine neither a passive nor an active
role of the subject with regard to his environment, but a
reciprocal encounter at the phenomenal level.
