After a little holiday break I am finally getting back to our dialogue about “the process” of design and its evolutionary journey. It reminds me of a ride down the river, this bend and that turn and old overhanging trees, passing by this farm and that town, finally arriving at our destination- or thats a visual picture I have of the journey we take. We already floated past the genesis of the idea (Frank Lloyd Wright called it the “seed germ“) a little agrarian, but it has always stuck in my mind. Also the “design development” where we hold all the ideas and concepts hostage; and through formulation and synthesis hammer them into a cohesive whole or GESTALT. I love that word. A professor told me there is a difference between a thought and an idea. An idea is an element of thinking but thought is the result of determined and focused thinking.
What comes around the bend next is a little bit of straightaway. For me honestly, in some regards its less exciting than the arm waving and loud talking of seeing a new design emerge. At the same time it’s incredibly important to focus in and get down to brass tacks if a truly amazing design is to be completed and realized. It’s time for rolling up sleeves and working out the details. Rafter tails, overhangs, parapets, cantilevered floor joists, muntins, mullions, furr outs, tile patterns, lighting, vents, gutters, rebar, rails panels moulding and knobs- and I can assure you that is a mere scratching of the surface. Some one said there are 10,000 decisions in a house. I would say at least that, (sure, if you don’t ever change your mind)- plus all the arguments that go along with those decisions. Did I say arguments, I meant to say passionate debate…
The design team is made up basically of the principal architect and the project architect and interior designer, all of whom work to pull together the differing parts of the project into one cohesive vision. In order to convey this vision into an actual building we draw, scrawl, write and specify - the device in the end we use is called in laymens terms “blueprints“, although they are actually black copies nowdays. Remember the old true BLUE prints that were entirely blue? When I was a newly minted intern my duties included “running prints“ ..oh the joy. This involved some crazy process which used gaseous laden ammonia to create the copy of the original. Unbelievable, and surely that shaved off 10 years of my life. On these drawings we also, at this time- get much more into the interior design. So important is it that years ago we created a new company call Tracery, which we work with on all our interior design. Its almost like the process spirals into the inside and in some ways begins again, even as the architects wail away at the structural components the interior designers set about the job of making it all sing inside. Everyone has their own part to focus on but also works together to sew exterior ideas and interior ideas into one thought. There are so many more things I could say about these efforts but hopefully you have a much greater understanding than you did 5 minutes ago. The next stop on the journey will be the construction phase which is a ride unto itself, and finishes at our final destination- your home.
Just to test your perception and synthesis capabilities, did you notice what the blueprint depicted?
2 Comments
I would add that The Details is when and where communication between so many people becomes so important. The gifted Architect is the one who possesses “The Nack” for communicating. The conductor of the symphony must take his ideas, based on the expectations of the audience, and weave a group of diverse players into a common theme. The Architect, while working out The Details, is no different.
Very well said Greg, I had also started to speak of the relationship(s) and communication between the architect and all the engineers and other consultants that make the project a reality, but really decided that would deserve to be a post unto itself, but you are spot on. I have always said that I can trace any problem on a project back to its root, and it is always there you find it is fundamentally a communication issue, period- end of story.