Abstract
On what basis can and ought one assess the relative merits of a given work of information architecture? In 2009, Jesse James Garrett pointed to the non-existence of such a normative theory and the community of practice’s consequent inability to indicate “what good means” as evidence that information architecture is not a proper discipline. Garrett’s rallying cry was for a wholesale reframing of that community in terms of User Experience Design, with human engagement as its center. In this chapter, I draw from the work of architects Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi to counter-propose a co-occurring reframing of the mostly-digital sense- and place-making work of information architecture in the normative terms of architecture, where the appropriate interplay of meaning and structural form comprises the basis of what good means.
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Notes
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Andrea Resmini explored Garrett’s closing plenary in his own closing plenary at the ASIS&T European Information Architecture Summit in 2013, explicitly connecting the need of a language of critique to the evolution of a poetics of information architecture (Resmini 2013a).
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Ann Arbor Vineyard Church (2014) http://annarborvineyard.org/about/what-we-believe/a-centered-set-church.
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Klyn, D. (2014). Dutch Uncles, Ducks and Decorated Sheds—Notes on the Intertwingularity of Meaning and Structure in Information Architecture. In: Resmini, A. (eds) Reframing Information Architecture. Human–Computer Interaction Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06492-5_9
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