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In this article, we seek to unpack and enrich the notion of the design concept. We do this through the use of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s ‘concept’ in its philosophical specificity to critique less-effective uses of the design concept. In particular, we investigate the idea that a concept is actually an aggregation of many concepts that can be seen to have a virtual consistency as a way to reframing more limited, typical, design concepts – used as justification, explanation, clarification or excuse. Our interest here is to explore how concepts can become much more useful throughout the process of design by drawing linkages between the concept and the workings of the creative process itself. In other words, we see the concept, parsed philosophically, as fusing with design thinking; and by taking advantage of this coupling each strengthens the other. Ultimately, we claim that a richer view of language and a more performative processes of making (diagramming) drive this coupling; and when it is working, the design concept becomes a much more useful instrument for designing.

Design thinking can be a powerful way to engage the world, allowing interactive understandings that are both analytic and experiential. When fully functioning, design thinking necessarily calls upon faculties often considered a-rational, a-causal and a-logical. Unfortunately, such faculties often give rise to academic suspicion. That is to say, the indeterminacies of design thinking often spawn unhelpful (and undermining) reductions. When this occurs, the fullness of design thinking gets channelled into a series of steps, rules of thumb or professional categories, thereby diluting its potency. In order to encourage a richer image of design thinking, particularly for the education of design students, this article explores ways to complement more familiar logical understandings of the design process with the functional complexity of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's ‘rhizome’. As a heuristic device, the rhizome and its related concepts are employed to provide a more complete picture of design thinking and to develop a practice that imbues design work with meaningful complexity. In this way, the rhizome promotes design thinking as a process comprised of both linear and non-linear aspects.

From the late Middle Ages onward an emphasis on the rational and the technical aspects of design and design drawing gained hold of architectural practice. In this transformation, the phenomenon of mood has been frequently overlooked or seen as something to be added on to a design; yet the fundamental grounding of mood, as described in Martin Heidegger's philosophy, is anything but secondary to our experience of the world. In fact, other facilities such as embodied experience, tactile and spatial awareness, and temporal perception all spring from the basic encounter with mood. In this article I describe how a lack of attunement to, and limited ability with, the various manifestations of mood perpetuates a disconnection between the architectural drawing and real buildings. I argue that as long as educational frameworks relegate the emotional and experiential to the place of a supplement, then our design processes will continue to unconsciously promote environments of thinness and superficiality.