Christopher Alexander's work introduced an approach to design using patterns from nature. https://arl.human.cornell.edu/linked%20docs/Alexander_A_Patt...

"You can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to work with your neighbors to improve your town and neighborhood; you can use it to design an office, or a workshop, or a public building. And you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction". - from the Semantic Scholar introduction

Systems design depends a lot on hardware and research rather than theory. So, you'll have to read papers and code to grokk things.

A good starting point would be to read about Operating Systems.

www.OSTEP.org