I'm a designer get me out of here

Asked to contribute a piece on improvisation to a new magazine about sustainable design, I leapt at the chance because the notion of improvisation has been buzzing in my head for a couple of years. I remember claiming in some piece of writing that the best design combined a Vitruvian firmness of production with the freshness of improvisation. Now I wonder what on earth I meant, and I'm stuck, frankly.

Asked to contribute a piece on improvisation to a new magazine about sustainable design, I leapt at the chance because the notion of improvisation has been buzzing in my head for a couple of years. I remember claiming in some piece of writing that the best design combined a Vitruvian firmness of production with the freshness of improvisation. Now I wonder what on earth I meant, and I'm stuck, frankly.

For is design not in fact the opposite of improvisation? Design is planned, holistic and slow. Improvisation is intuitive, immediate and swift. Tellingly, Wikipedia lists 10 "domains" for improvisation in the arts (poetry, comedy, music, etc.), something called "corporate improvisation training", unclassified "role playing games", and finally one short category adjacent to design: engineering (largely occupied by the sub-category of improvised weapons). All this suggests that you’d better off shipwrecked with a troupe of luvvies than with a studio of designers.

Yet isn't design classicly defined as problem solving? Dieter Rams says at the end of Gary Hurstwit's film Objectified that from here on out "the value of design will be measured in how it can help us survive". Wow.  Here am I arguing that design IS resourcefulness and self reliance and all, but when the chips are down, is it a survival skill? Or is it a body of technical knoweldge fit only for civilised, refined, strategic, upper domains of social and commercial strife? 

Put it this way: would you want to be lost at sea/up a mountain at night/in the jungle with any of the following: Jonathan Ive? Chris Wise? Hilary Cottam? Dieter Rams? Tim Brown? Hella Jongherius? Ben Fry? Peter Saville? I take comfort in the fact that my husband, a graphic designer, is also an Eagle Scout.