Symbiotic Tame Problems
Methodology, for normal problems
Gonzalo Raineri
Designer and educator
About this course
A tame problem is not an easy one. It is a problem that holds still: it can be stated in full before the work begins, it has a point where it is done, its answer can be checked as right or wrong, and the method that solved the last of its kind solves the next. Most of what a practitioner is trained for is of this kind.
Where it goes wrong is at the edges of the method. The material is chosen, the figure is met, the certificate is issued, and nobody has asked who paid for the saving or what the work does ten years on. Symbiotic Design keeps the method and widens what it answers to.
This course shows how the framework works on a tame problem: the components taken in order, each with its question, each decision weighed with ethics first, so the method stays fast and the result can be defended to the people it affects.
You leave able to recognise a tame problem, run a method through it, and answer for its result.
What you will be able to do
- Recognise a tame problem by its marks: a stable statement, a stopping point, an answer that can be checked.
- Run the framework through it in order, one question at a time.
- Weigh each step with ethics first, before the saving, the schedule and the cost.
- See what a method leaves out, and bring it back in.
- Notice when a tame problem has stopped being one.
Your instructor
Founder of the Academy, Bioclimatic Architect and expert in Symbiotic Design, the new frontier for sustainability