Landscape Architecture #PP01-design.

Hmmm. So I need to do the philosophical work: where do I stand, what's my position and where am I going?

My first thought on this is that you develop a philosophical position through experience of the world and your practice in it. But then, in response to that, I say it is useful to formulate a philosophical position and to allow it to be refined by experience and practice. This, then, indicates an ongoing process of readjustment and refinement of the positon, kind of like the way that beetles fly in constantly recalculated right angles to reach their destination: always being a little bit out in their flightpath calculations so constantly readjusting their flight pattern at 90 degrees, therefore travelling ever smaller error tradjectories. Implicit in this is the very important notion that one is never starting from zero. Always you are coming from an already developed position, no matter how unaware of it you are.

So then my first position is this:
It is useful to have a position and therefor a primary destination. Allow your position to be refined through the external forces of the world and your own actions and practice.

This might then be applied to design practice thus:
Develop an initial design.
This will be based on what is known, previous design and first creative hunches. Once you have made a move, look at other work and look at Nature's solutions; seek opinions. All this will give information on how the form could be developed and/or reiterated.
To state a negetive of this: don't waste time being uncertain and experimenting for it's own sake just because someone else finds that a good way to design. (Only play games that you know the rules to.)
Allow new data to influence the form. Search for new information that will refine and change how design strategies might be applied in the future.

This brings me to the next point...