situational | types

Design seldom benefits from infinite possibilities. It is more likely to be beneficial and appreciated when its variations occur on a few appropriate themes.

Much as architecture depends on habitual patterns for its liveability, so the ad hoc local networks of devices must produce recurrent types. Whether those types reflect technological possibilities or human patterns becomes a matter of design. 

Here follows a rudimentary typology of thirty situations. 

| one set of situational types |

| at work |

• Deliberating (places for thinking)
• Presenting (places for speaking in groups)
• Collaborating (places for working within groups)
• Dealing (places for negotiating)
• Documenting (places for references resources)
• Officiating (places for institutions to serve their constituencies)
• Crafting (places for skilled practice)
• Associating (places where businesses form ecologies)
• Learning (places for experiments and explanations)
• Cultivating (places for stewardship)
• Watching (places for monitoring)

| at home |

• Sheltering (places with comfortable climate)
• Recharging (places for maintaining the body)
• Idling (restful places for watching the world go by)
• Confining (places to be held in)
• Servicing (places with local support networks)
• Metering (places where services flow incrementally)

| on the to town...|

• Eating, drinking, talking (places for socialising)
• Gathering (places to meet)
• Cruising (places for seeing and being seen)
• Belonging (places for insiders)
• Shopping (places for recreational retailing)
• Sporting (places for embodied play)
• Attending (places for cultural productions)
• Commemorating (places for ritual)

| on the road...|

• Gazing/touring (places to visit)
• Hoteling (places to be at home away from home)
• Adventuring (places for embodied challenge)
• Driving (car as place)
• Walking (places at human scale)