philosophy of architecture and design

FT.com - a definition jouralism, in case anyone's forgotten

2005-04-15T04:47:00.000-04:00

FT.com / The Business Book of the Year Award - Why there is a need for this award: "Journalism in general - and business journalism in particular - is to a large degree the task of sorting the newsworthy from the commonplace, the interesting from the dull, so that busy readers learn what they need to learn as quickly and efficiently as possible."

rick poynor on architects, surgeons and lawyers

2005-03-18T21:43:00.000-05:00

"It’s no secret that graphic designers can be arrogant, but this is a kids’ erector set compared to the architectural ego in its most towering, steel-trussed, grandiloquent forms. An architectural education is, after all, long and demanding. You have to be smart and determined, with large reserves of self-belief to go through with it. Those who make it to the highest levels of the profession mix with the super-wealthy, become rich themselves and achieve great power, but any architect enjoys considerable social standing. The other professional groups that architects most resemble are consultant surgeons and lawyers. What links them is the control they are licensed to exert over our physical being. Surgeons have life-saving access to the body’s vulnerable interior. Architects channel and direct the body’s movements in space and our safety depends on them. Lawyers concern themselves with whether the body will remain free, or be constrained, or even die in countries that retain the death penalty. These are tremendous forms of power for an individual to wield and this knowledge and the sense of self-importance it fosters permeates these professions, shaping their ethos, and influencing the status we accord to these groups."

the mean streets of nyc - not for me

2005-02-17T22:40:00.000-05:00

well sports fans, if it wasn't obvious by my previous postings, life in nyc has been unpleasant to say the least - and we've chucked it in, thankfully. for the sake of me and my wife's sanity, our careers, the bank balance, our marriage, and our son's future, to say the least. being back in london is calming and settling. it's going to take some time to get my head around things, and really figure out what's going on with the blog, not to mention my career and creative/intellectual well being.

for such a big city, its remarkable that i've come away thinking that it feels intellectually starved - starved of the sophisticated clients that i so wrongly thought would converge on such internationally renowned practices as those making their home in manhattan. perhaps its the american architecture system combined with the general impression of the relative importance of design and the lack of widespread interest in the benefits of good design that prevents it from manifesting.

in any case, i'm back in europe where i'm happy, and on my way back to foster and partners, where i was mostly happy except for their meager salaries. the work there is fathoms beyond what can even begin to be achieved in america.

design blogs proliferate the net and offer instant info

2004-12-04T22:32:00.000-05:00

“When I started Dezain in 1999, it was very difficult to find where nice online sources on design and architecture were, and when they were updated, so I decided to make a list of these resources to help me and other people,” he says. “It is daily research and a memorandum for my study, and also what I think many people want to know.” - Eizo Okada, courtesy of alex wiltshire, icon magazine.

More to the point, it seems that someone else has EXACTLY the same rationale behind his blog: 'Dan Hill, editor of City of Sound, set up his blog for similar reasons. Hill is the design and technology manager for BBC Radio Interactive: “My blog is partly a response to the informational overload from working in an insanely fast-moving industry. It’s a time characterised by exponential rates of change in terms of culture, architecture, cities and design practice in general. City of Sound is an indexed notebook I can store concepts in and can refer back to easily. It’s a personal information tool as much as it’s a publishing device.”' - again, courtesy of alex wiltshire, icon magazine.

architecture - pure or applied research

2004-11-28T18:18:00.000-05:00

From BD, CABE (UK) chief criticised the research assessment exercise (RAE), whose results are used to determine how university funding is allocated. “To say research has to be pure rather than applied cannot be based on an understanding of how the profession works. Architecture is an applied discipline [...].”

This is a poignant and relevant issue given that finishing my PhD is currently under consideration - the problem with doing a PhD in architecture revolves around this very issue - is it possible to do pure research in a field that is primarily applied and project based?

it pays to take stock

2004-11-28T01:39:00.000-05:00

all too often do we get wrapped up in the daily meanderings of our existence that we forget to attend to the path of our trajectory. by taking stock of the direction we are headed we can ensure we get to where we really want.

dr robert freeman on creativity

2004-11-27T23:40:00.000-05:00

"WHAT is creativity? It's certainly not standardized-test intelligence. Stephen Cannell, all by himself, is proof of that. How do you solve a problem creatively? It's often a mistake to get too smart too quickly. Expert opinion fouls up the creative engine; conventional wisdom is creative death. So develop your own ideas yourself, alone, without external information and before seeking the opinion of others. Your naïveté will be more ally than enemy on the creativity battlefield. Brood. Cogitate. Meditate. Agonize. Uncertainty, ambiguity, and doubt are all friends of the creative process. Experience tension, frustration, stress. Stimulating creativity means multiplying your options, generating alternative, contrasting, conflicting solutions. Lose yourself. Feel the flow. But remember what psychologist Abraham Maslow said: Creativity might be as much found in a first-rate chicken soup as in a third-rate painting. Suffer with humor to get closer to truth."

Brilliant. thanks to dr. freeman and closertotruth.com. more on this topic soon.

take it slow, masticate a little

2004-11-27T23:21:00.000-05:00

nyc intellectuals come through again (although I have yet to meet any here) with the concept of slow design - "slowLab’s programs actively address the ecological, socio-cultural and personal impacts of design".

"Fast food, media soundbytes, speedy information networks, rapid, global flows of goods and services, an over-saturated and ever-growing commercial landscape...... Daily life has become a cacophony of experiences that disable our senses, disconnect us from one another and damage the environment.

But deep experience of the world-- meaningful and revealing relationships with the people, places and things we interact with, and importantly, with our own inner selves-- requires many speeds of engagement, and especially the slower ones.

'slow design' is a holistic approach to design thinking, process and outcomes.
It envisions positive human and environmental impact of designed products, environments and systems, while constructively critiquing the processes and technologies of which they are born. It celebrates local, close-mesh networks of people and industry, it preserves and draws upon our cultural diversity, and it relies on the open sharing of ideas and information to arrive at innovative design solutions.

'slow design’ is not time-based. It doesn't refer to how long it takes to make something, but rather describes the designer's elevated state of awareness in the process of creation, the quality of its tangible outcomes and a richer experience for the end-user."

educational experiences - EU and US

2004-11-27T01:28:00.000-05:00

one of the major reasons for taking my son back to europe is, on many levels, the impoverished education I received in chicago - the ignorance, bigotry, racism and sexism that I experienced from 1971-1995 probably took me the better part of 10 years to 'unlearn' after I left, as I re-educated myself about the world and what's right and wrong. despite the obvious and great advantages of US education, this is in addition to unhealthy levels of narrow-mindedness and self-interest, rampant capitalism, hipocracy on a grand scale, lack of international connectivity (let alone general knowledge) or real interest in and concern for the world beyond US borders. In hindsight, the primary and secondary educational curriculum and the system in which it has developed leaves much to be desired, coming from the perspective of an internationally educated and concerned world citizen. I'm sorry my fellow americans, but this country is not what I thought it was 15 years ago.

quality control

2004-11-22T14:45:00.000-05:00

everybody seems to develop rigor mortis when it comes time for quality control. if you're going to do the work in the first place, then why not make sure that it is correct before it goes out? always take the time to check your work, then have it checked by someone else - preferrably your supervisor or manager. we spent ages at the office in hong kong developing a quality control procedure, which, although thoroughly bureaucratic, was effective in ensuring that things got checked and that there was an easily navigable paper trail for most submissions and correspondence - very important for those inevitable cock-ups by staff, contractors and clients alike.
0411271231 amended.

blog conceptual organisation

2004-11-16T22:42:00.001-05:00

as a steer for all you peeps and as another record of thoughts on the subject, this blog contains (practical) advice on process and practice; philosophy (or theory) of creation and creativity in the production of architecture and design (either objects or images), as well as philosophy of process and practice, and ideas about creative inspiration, obtaining it and retaining it.

furthermore, it's a personal tool to record and store thoughts, pinpoint and elucidate concepts, both for future reference and as a publishing tool to get these thoughts 'out there' and attempt to illicit feedback and discussion - most important to a writer.

thought and thinking

2004-11-16T01:20:00.000-05:00

“Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the stream of thought that is forever flowing through one’s head.” - Mark Twain

“…realize in your daily life that ‘matter’ is merely an aggregation of protons and electrons subject entirely to the control of Mind; that your environment, your success, your happiness, are all of your own making… All wealth depends upon a clear understanding of the fact that mind- thought - is the only creator. The great business of life is thinking. Control your thoughts and you control circumstance.” - Robert Collier

“A man is what he thinks all day.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“There is a science to getting rich, and it is an exact science, like algebra or arithmetic. There are certain laws which govern the process of acquiring riches, and once you learn and obey these laws, you will get rich [or anything else you desire] with mathematical certainty. [The basic fact is]…we are a Thinking Substance, and thinking substance always takes the form of that which it thinks about.” - Wallace D. Wattles & Dr. Judith Powell

“Those people who think they can do something and those who think they can’t are both right.” - Henry Ford

“Every thought has the power to bring into being the visible from the invisible. It is absolutely necessary for us all to understand that everything we think, do or say comes back to us. Every thought, word or action- without exception- manifests itself [in some way] as an actual reality.” - Ann Wigmore

“Hold a picture of yourself long enough in your mind’s eye and you will be drawn toward it.” - Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick

“The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.”-William James

check out www.thegreatestsecret.com for other quotes and ways to unlock your hidden potential.

architectural philosophy - a framework for decisionmaking

2004-11-14T10:43:00.000-05:00

develop 'a philosophy', or a manifesto of sorts, to determine an end, and to aid in the delineation of the means. The idea with developing your own 'philosophy' is to provide a framework for decision-making. For instance, an idealist romantic might provide a scenario different from a minimal pragmatist.

Working with a clean slate seems to be a matter of conflict for some, the endless possibilities being just that, endless. With some self-imposed restrictions and constraints, a programme of sorts, the possibilities seem to 'offer up' a solution in themselves. We are able to perceive an answer to the problem, or at least a better focus on what avenues are most pragmatic or appropriate, based on our programme in combination with our views about the world - our philosophy. Thus, having a limited number of avenues to pursue, an aim or solution becomes clearer. Set yourself a series of tasks, and a programme, and maintain it. For without this, frustration manifests itself.

It is this programme, these self-imposed constraints, that aid in refining your philosophy from a group of unconnected thoughts and feelings, into a definable set of views - a kind of world view. From this broad perspective, armed with your particular view of the world, you can look at individual conditions and make decisions that reference back to your main views, your overall objective, your end goals. This is simply defining a method for decision-making that starts with a disconnected group of feelings, refines those into a distinct and consistent way of looking at the world, and ensures that our actions and goals are undertaken in a way that is consistent with, supports, strengthens, develops and refines that way of seeing - that world view. It is in fact this process that makes us distinctly human, which is consistent with choice and second-degree self-reflection not present in higher-order primates or mammals. They are unable to reflect in the way we do, and they do not have the capacity for highly organised culture the way we do. However, I digress. The point remains that a consistent set of views enable us to see the world more clearly and make decisions based on principles developed in conjunction with and supportive of our view of the world.

In another philosophical digression, is the reverse possible, where we develop a set of principles out of our feelings and thoughts, from which our world view takes shape? For the purposes of this discussion, the two are mutually supportive and exist interdependently, whereby either is possible, yet each element alone is necessary but not sufficient to support a consistent philosophy.

fulfillment and satisfaction - getting what you want out of being a designer, PT II

2004-11-14T10:22:00.000-05:00

Taking time to fulfill your personal interests, and the whole problem of fulfilment and satisfaction, is something that crosses everybody's mind now and then. The possibility of putting in extra hours in your job obviously takes away from personal development time… However, with the right job we should be able to integrate our personal interests into our work. Easier said than done...

Don’t just do the bare minimum… I remember a fella at Grimshaw's named benny o’looney... He sketched and drew everything to the nth degree. What do I say to that? Don’t succumb to the average, working to the minimum… because that's easy, and nobody ever got anywhere or got anything out of doing the bare minimum. Take it as far as it is willing to go, in every aspect… push the limits of everything. Perhaps by pushing the limits at work, we can to get to that point of integration - personal interests and work life become interconnected.

laziness or ruthlessness - getting what you want out of being a designer

2004-11-13T23:31:00.000-05:00

BE RUTHLESS - grab. write. move. draw. type. sketch. doodle. do whatever it takes.

UTILIZE YOUR RESOURCES - that’s what they're there for. Don't be lazy - laziness and contentedness are the same thing and will sap the life out of you, leaving your colleagues to step all over you and take those opportunities that you were too busy contemplating instead of getting.

SET REASONABLE GOALS - don't scare yourself about getting loads of work done in an impossible amount of time - break up the task into mentally manageable portions so large tasks seem easier to tackle.

DO IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME - its better to spend the time now to sort things out then keep going through this same issues over and over in your head. remember, DON’T KEEP MAKING EXCUSES.

DO NOT PROCRASTINATE - this is worse than slow death. putting it off and subconsciously finding distractions, or worse - making up excuses why it can wait, or even worse - blaming someone else for why it has to wait, will bring you nothing positive and only negatives. THERE ARE NO SECOND CHANCES - make every moment count as if there were no tomorrow.

BE that person YOU would like to work with. Have the guts to recognise the things you can't change and the sense to recognise that the only person you can change is YOU.

appropriate team interaction makes design goals achievable

2004-11-12T23:55:00.000-05:00

... and assertiveness, is a major element... see why. the assertiveness model goes as follows: "Assertiveness lies in the middle of a continuum of behaviour towards others, that the Backs defined in terms of how we recognise the rights of the two parties involved. Aggressive - You exert your right to have ideas and opinions at the expense of the other person's rights. In fact you behave as if the other person's rights don't matter. Assertive - You exert your rights freely and clearly, but at the same recognise the other person's rights to be heard, to have pride in what they do, etc. Non-Assertive - You take too much account of the other person's rights, to the extent that you forego some or all of your rights to express ideas or influence events." check out current management topics as well.

there's no need to state the obvious about the poor state of design management, and the widespread inability of designers to be good managers. Also, see why we shouldn't feel guilty saying no sometimes, and why people skills are paramount to achieving the highest standard of design. A group i found whilst googling a review of 'seven habits' for another post earlier have a very interesting knowledge page.

design practice and design practitioners

2004-11-12T16:33:00.000-05:00

its better to live as your own man, than live as a fool in someone else's dream...

take the opportunity to ask yourself whether you are happy executing someone else's ideas, or whether you would rather be the sole author of your own ideas. Then ask yourself A) do you have any clients, as Ken Shuttlewoth, now of makeplaces fame, asked me when I told him during his leaving party that I wished to someday have my own practice, and B) do you know how to go about winning clients, and C) do you have any of your own money to live off and sustain your practice when things are slow?

Its easy to say this, yet it is extraordinarily difficult and financially risky to get involved on your own. The RIBA Bookstore publishes a booklet series as guides for the small practice - they will give you some idea of the quagmire sole practitioners can get themselves into...

As a new father I will happily remain in the employ of another, however it must be the right kind of practice with the right combination of elements.

0411201644

slight change of nomenclature

2004-11-12T14:03:00.000-05:00

having created a new weblog at aplusd for project-based reviews of and commentary on architecture and design, and considering the posts here are less to do about philosophy itself and more about architecture and design, I have changed the title to philosophy of architecture and design. hope that's not too confusing...

image-based culture is not the norm

2004-11-12T13:30:00.000-05:00

it seems that someone called 'mudmonkey' agrees and feels strongly enough to comment on the subject...

"...I was often told [...] that an good and interesting idea / concept / design should come with an interesting [read: attention-grabbing] presentation so that people would be interested enough to have a closer look [...] But it is often the case nowadays that there is nothing good or interesting behind the dazzling presentation, just a CAD-generated prelude to ill-conceived planning and meaningless premises."

write me your thoughts. are we an imaged-based, substance-less culture on the way to overload and underperform?

check out the new architecture and design blog

2004-11-12T13:10:00.000-05:00

subliminal marketing and consumption

2004-11-12T01:01:00.000-05:00

not 10 minutes after I finish writing about the issue of fashion and fad in contemporary consumer society, does a little ferret butt-weasel from some crap internet marketing company called intelliminds leave me a cut-and-paste comment about exclusive content and money or promotional materials for writing about their products. What a pile of wank - I wouldn't take their money if they were stuffing it in my penis hole or if they baked a fucking chocolate cake with it.

so i nav to their site, where they claim to be 'Online Influencers and Opinion Makers'... what the fuck is that? I've heard about these little buggers, where they pay people to ferret around blogs and chatrooms 'subtly' dropping little product placement bombs and creating a buzz about stuff that nobody in their right minds should really give a flying fuck about, considering the bigger problems in this world, not to mention the problems people have right at home (read: isolationism, stupidity, obesity, drug-use, alcoholism, lack of personality and no sense of humor, to begin with).

transcend mediocrity

2004-11-11T16:40:00.000-05:00

originality and complexity are not paramount - eschew any attempts to suggest otherwise. assume the american retail consumer adage that 'the customer is always right' applies to architecture and design - the client should almost always get what they want (although perhaps not when it is bad for them or is not appropriate). To clarify, we should not forget that we are working for them - they don't work for us - thus we should always design with the client's interest in mind. All to often we as designers do things which fancy us, and our actions may not always be referenced back to the client and the appropriateness of our design to their interests and goals.

transcending our own laziness and frustrations with the built-in restriaint mechanisms of architecture and construction in our society, we can and will produce better design and better environments.

just don't put up with it - there is no excuse to put up with bad design or bad instructions or bad performances from anyone or anywhere that you are not comfortable with. this is not to say that we should be aggressive or non-assertive at the expense of good work and appropriate relations - rejecting mediocrity should be assertive yet tempered with appropriateness as well.

presentation quality

2004-11-11T11:18:00.000-05:00

I was once told by Norman Foster during a critique in the modelshop of the Beijing Airport competition that a presentation is only ever as good as the worst drawing or board. A bad board will bring down the level of the rest of the presentation material.

Taking this to its logical conclusion, it is important to review all your presentation materials to ensure everything meets a minimum standard of quality. This will prevent your audience from believing that, for instance, your rendering company is good, but your plans and sections are rubbish - that's a big tick against you regardless how prepared your presentation material is. The best way around having rubbish material is to be a knockout presenter - like Norman.

why PHAD? what's it all about?

2004-11-11T09:58:00.000-05:00

so much about presentation, in architecture, design or otherwise, is inherent in the word itself - presentation. recently, many things have been less about the quality of the material and more about the image, creating a brand, selling an idea. Our work as architects and designers should place more weight on content and less on image and sales. Serious work will not fade in the face of fashion and fad. Computer wizardry and technique is never a supplement for well thought-out content and well executed material that arises from it.

Fashion and fad are generated in a self-perpetuating cycle for a consumer culture by the media outlets of capitalist businesses, whose primary concern is profit and shareholder appeasement (read: benefit) over public welfare and social or environmental benefit. Architecture, as the pre-eminent plastic art that serves humankind as shelter and provides the environment in and around which we conduct our very existence, should not ever be subject to the seasonal fluctuations inherent in many other design disciplines. While it should be subject to questions of appropriateness and issues of aesthetics, some of these questions themselves are subject to being more or less objective, and thus sometimes somewhat subjective.

More importantly, this issue of fashion and fad in contemporary consumer society is itself a cultural epidemic, and the intent here is to counter that movement, if you will, with a one that is diametrically opposed - one that holds in highest regard and seeks to produce serious and well considered design and discourse that take as its fundamental premise the requirement that all design should benefit public welfare and contribute to social and environmental prosperity (providing a certain basic standard of living is available to its proponents in their successful and productive endeavours).

Should we not consider that all design take notice of these criteria? Should we not consider that all things that make up (read: clutter) our environment must be subject to these criteria? Should we not go so far as to enact legislation universally that ensures our right to environments free from the cluttering disease that accompanies contemporary consumer society - that of fashion and fad, advertising and sales, telemarketing and mail shots? Why suggest that architecture, whether it be well-considered, well-designed or well-executed, simply become the shell in which our over-advertised and over-consumed lives are relentlessly conducted? Should we not extend the notion of well designed environment to the entire environment and everything that we encounter? If we abstain from taking note of, then taking action on, these issues, we risk relegating architecture and the whole of design to become a backdrop for the projected desires of the corporate world and the capitalists, all of which come down to basically three things - profit, wealth and ultimately, greed.

qualifying the design process

2004-11-11T09:50:00.000-05:00

this morning while thinking about what makes 'signature architects' what they are, i thought about whether there was a nomenclature for my own design process, and the process typical of 'signature architects' (more about them later).

the three qualifications I have made are as follows:
- story-based architecture and design is a design process (and product) about an idea or a concept.
- evolutionary architecture and design is process/product evolving from conditions (existing or otherwise, possibly) and exploration based on those conditions.
- architecture about nothing is literally that, process/product developing for no reason.

Contentious? maybe. More to come.