TT: Why do you say that critical thinking is more important than literacy or numeracy?
DW: Literacy and numeracy are obviously essential to make our thoughts coherent, understandable and precisely transferable between human beings. Designers, however, who create our products, think very critically and intuitively, often not even using words or numbers. They need to integrate many disparate concepts from the functional to the beautiful, combining science with art to find an acceptable solution - a highly complex balancing act. On the other hand design appreciation by consumers is a necessary step in obtaining value for money, requiring personal facts to be compared with feelings, accepting or rejecting alternatives – a kind of reverse design process. Designing and appreciation are thus two sides of the same coin. In this way, design is a powerful conceptual filter that has been greatly misunderstood by educators for far too long - it does not supplant literacy and numeracy but adds significant potential for better living and increasing innovation in relation to global sustainability.

TT: What do you mean when you say that design is a verb as well as a noun?
DW: Our education system (and common use) tends to imply that Art and Design are finished products, as nouns, but the process of designing or appreciating is really a verb. It is the basic thinking about the making of an object – and its ultimate aim of satisfying a need and being appreciated.

TT: Can you expand on the notion that architecture is "no use without furniture"?

DW: Imagine your house as a bare shell without any fittings or furniture. Even if the house structure provides a perfectly controlled internal environment it would still be physically uncomfortable without furnishings and acoustically unacceptable. There would be no softness to ensure livability, cushioning the human frame from the literal hardness of the practical house structure (architecture).

TT: You say the general public has not yet developed a useful design lexicon and that design should be woven into the school curriculum. How?

DW: This is where design as a verb constantly comes into play as a balancing act - "do I do this or that?" The questions that require evaluation are relative to age and interests, becoming more complex with gained knowledge. Personal values develop, especially in relation to how our environment is being degraded because of population growth, increasing migration, resource depletion and pollution of the environment - and the urgent need for encouraging renewable energies.

The rapid growth of technology is also requiring all consumers to be critically aware of real needs (compared with wants) in relation to their consequences on our planet. This requires broad integrative, design-thinking-and-doing across the whole school curriculum.

Facilitation of the critical acquisition of useful knowledge should be integral to every "subject" area.

This approach has meaning to young minds and research shows that it remains better embedded in the human brain compared with taught knowledge. In this way our children can think ahead in positive ways, learning from historical mistakes. Some disconnected aspects of this approach are now being attempted in some schools but I doubt if it is being integrated throughout the curriculum as a whole.

I should stress that the aim is not to produce professional designers – but we do urgently need aware, critical consumers in Australian society who can recognise good from bad.

Is there a planning or design issue in Canberra that you would like to discuss with Tony? Email tonytrobe@ttarchitecture.com.au