Abstract

The metaphorization of space creates possibilities for modelling ‘complex’ phenomena. Four generic spatialities are explored - physical, social, documentary and paradigmatic. There are four irreducible constructions of physical space - realist, dualist, idealist and pluralist. The generic conception of social space plays off the static against the dynamic. Documentary space is the product of contingently defined formal and informational qualities. Paradigmatic space is divided into discreet regions, each defined in incommensurable terms, with the proviso that an ironic, reflexive position may exist beyond the dissolution of metaphysics. Organization is the differentiation of space and its subsequent narrative/visual reconstruction embodied in a temporal blur. ‘Design’ has an ontologically focussed meaning - designed objects, designs as objects - and an epistemologically focussed one - design processes, design as knowledge. The museum comprises an archaeology of instit-utional forms, has an uncertain material/social boundary and is a reflexive organization. The organization of design presents a constellation of four complex objects - product, programme, process, and philosophy. The design of museum design involves a reconstruction of ideolo-gically-charged, multidisciplinary, reflexive practice. Organizations display conserva-tive, ‘museographical’ qualities and radically-creative, ‘new-museological’ qualities. The museum-design-organization complex places the practitioner at the ‘moment’ of forward-projecting and backward-projecting processes of material culture. This promotes productive processes of organizational perversion, subversion and inversion. Design is an organizational virus, the museum radically adaptive because multiply infected. Through consideration of organizational and museological objects, design research may find its centre.