The Key Role of Keywords in Architectural Design: A Systemic Framework

The practice of architectural design is experiencing disruptive changes—e.g., the incredible growth of architects worldwide, the relevance of social media and the impact of artificial intelligence—typically analysed and studied as separate phenomena. Through a narrative research approach, this paper connects these emerging trends into a systemic view by referring to two conceptual frameworks—systems theory and transcendental phenomenology. Thus, it shows their mutual irritations, investigating the consequences of the practice of design and the collective architectural imaginary and mapping out the main findings through two diagrams. This paper recognises a series of key points of the resulting architectural system, the paramount being the extensive and mainly unconscious use of keywords. Then, clarifying the ontological dual nature of keywords, it conjectures that design will evolve differently for ordinary cases—characterised by passive keywords and competence—and for the most extraordinary ones—where mastery will have a critical role through active keywords.