Error Harvest: A Method for System Design in Non- Ideal Conditions

In this paper, we present "error harvest", a new method for educating and training designers of complex sociotechnical and spatial systems (for example, urban units) under non-ideal conditions. Error harvest confronts the designer with the explication of inherent flaws and predictable (although perhaps rare or unlikely) shocks in the found system, and represents an exercise in reinterpreting (by means of design solutions) these flaws and shocks as productive mechanisms of the system (with productivity defined within the exercise as the desired goals that the mechanisms should achieve). In the article, we present and elaborate the method within and in relation to the fields of spatial practices, system design, broken world design, and non-ideal institutional epistemology. In conclusion, we present two different examples of the use of the method.