Modelling co-evolution in design practice

Co-evolution is considered as a key characteristic of designing. Several authors have described design thinking processes as the co-evolution of design problem and design solution. Its theoretical grounding is, however, still in an early stage. In this paper, we aim to bring the concept further by studying a real life design meeting of an architect and a client. We developed a model of how co-evolution in a multi-party setting might work, consisting of the problems as perceived by the architect and client, the solutions as perceived by the architect and client, and relations between those. A co-evolution episode starts with introducing an underdeveloped design-solution pairing from the perspective of the initiating actor and ends with summing up the discussion and/or agreeing on the decisions taken. The developed model was used to look in detail at the utterances in three co-evolution episodes and then refined by adding a intermediate space concerning the ‘use’ of the building and the application of boundary objects that mediates between problem and solution spaces in interactions between designer and client.