Objective design evaluation requires that the criteria for assessment be unambiguously specified and that these criteria be applied in accordance with strict procedural rules. Without objectivity, it is claimed, evaluation is merely subjective, which is to say arbitrary and dependent on individual vagaries. This paper argues that objectivity in the assessment of design is unattainable, firstly because the selection and interpretation of the criteria involve processes of judgment which cannot be objective, and secondly because procedural rules for the application of the criteria cannot be specified. If assessment cannot be objective, however, it does not follow that it is unconstrained or does not refer to norms or criteria. This erroneous assumption arises from an inappropriate imposition of the subject-object dichotomy. The assessment is dependent on the assessor's preconceptions—his or her prejudices, tacit understandings, experience and anticipations. These are not, for the greater part, private and personally idiosyncratic, but are shared with members of a hermeneutical community which, because of its shared training and practices, interprets designs in a manner which takes certain values for granted. These tacit values act as norms and criteria for the assessor, set bounds to individual eccentricities in judgment, and tacitly establish the procedural rules for applying criteria. Design assessments are neither objective nor subjective but are made in accordance with the tacit criteria shared by a hermeneutical community
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