Scaling — the technique of working with proportionally reduced (or enlarged) representations — is one of the fundamental tools in a designer’s toolbox, especially when working on big things like buildings, landscapes, or territories. It would be easy to think of scale as purely technical, a matter of applying a mathematical function. But historian of science Deborah R. Coen suggests there’s a bigger picture:

scaling is also something we all do every day. It is how we think, for instance, about how one individual’s vote might influence a national election, or whether buying a hybrid car might slow global warming. It can also be a way of situating the known world in relation to times or places that are distant or otherwise inaccessible to direct experience. Scaling makes it possible to weigh the consequences of human actions at multiple removes and to coordinate action at multiple levels of governance.

Deborah R. Coen, Climate in Motion. Science, Empire, and the Problem of Scale.

What if designers thought of scaling practices more broadly? How do we and others participate in worlds beyond the scope of our bodies? How do we (try to) reach distant or inaccessible places and times, and coordinate actions?