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EGLC, the European Group for Lean Construction is a discussion platform that meets twice per year. It is the European chapter of IGLC.

Do you want to know more? Check: Lean Reading Primer.

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EGLC4 in Loughborough, 23-24 November 2006

 

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Introduction to Lean Design

Ype Cuperus
Design has different meanings. It can be an object or a plan.
Design as an object can have a cultural meaning: A Charles Eames chair is called design. An Ikea Billy bookshelf is a perfect design without a cultural meaning. Design as an object is the end of a process. The built environment is partly the result of a design process. Some elements, such as equipment and interior decoration have a short life cycle, with characteristics of a consumer product: they depreciate. Medium long term elements such as the base building slowly appreciate in value, if maintained well. Long term aspects such as the urban fabric ('location') have unpredictable influences on the value of real estate.
A ship design or a building design is a plan and it is the start of a process.
Design is also an activity. It is a strategy to solve problems. As a strategy it explores and finds sololutions in terrains that are invisible to many other problem solvers.
De Jong (1992) recognizes a partly overlapping desirable, a probable and a possible future. The egg diagram makes clear that not everything desirable is possible and some of what we want it is probable. We don’t have to design the probable future, we already know how it will probably be. This of course is an alarming prospective if we see how the environment is being exhausted. De Jong gives it a positive twist. There is more than the probable future. The impossible future is the domain of science fiction. And then there is the improbable but possible future. We do not know how this will be, because we cannot imagine. Still, this is where many desirable solutions for problems can be found. This domain can only be explored by design.
Design as an activity needs to be learned and is therefore subject of teaching. Should we train the new Calatrava's, architects who design the extraordinary or should we train the designers of the ordinary? Every day's and everybody's environment, as an environment for Billy bookshelves? Or both? Design schools and their students concentrate on the first. Open Building supports the latter. John Habraken gives guidelines how to design the ordinary and have to share design responsibilities rather than being Prima Donna architects.
Design as an activity precedes the construction phase. How can we during the design stage create conditions for a lean production process?
Design as an activity is also subject to creating waste. How can we create value and banish waste in the design process?
This session aims to discuss the above-mentioned questions. Sigmund Aslesen's contribution focusses on the virtues of modular design in ship building, Emile Quanjel advocates the idea that designing, consulting and constructing parties should collaborate from the initiative of the design, in order to prevent a Babel-like confusion.

Last updated:

February 11, 2007

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