go slow...

under construction

Good design is slow.

It is incremental.

It evolves.

It must be flexible.

And always a compromise.

This section focuses on

THE DESIGN PROCESS.

As you design, it gets disturbing on just how long this is taking… Are you on the right path? Are you lost? Are you normal?

To relieve your fears, compare yourself to a couple of architects, IMHO,  best of the best… Christopher Alexander and Peter  Zumthor.

Let’s say, you live a good 80 years. Then, maybe 50 of those years, are working years…

…so for an architect to spend 10 of those years on a project is a good chunk… right? …. a LONG time.

Both Chris Alexander (Vincent Scully Prize 2009) and Peter  Zumthor (2009 Pritzker Architecture Prize) were astonishingly slow. Sure multiple projects are done concurrently, but the tenacity to keep plugging is humbling.

Alexander spent 20 years working out his 15 Fundamental Properties.

Peter Zumthor, 

  • began thinking of the LA Art Museum back in 2006…and it is breaking ground now in 2021…16 years later…. maybe opening in 2 more years... a good chunk of time to keep your eye on the goal, keep believing, not giving up, persistence…not doubting yourself.

As the New Yorker article says, “He often begins his designs with impressionistic pastel sketches and spends years pondering models, constructed with the actual materials, watching the effect of light on the most expensive doll houses. He is known to handcraft his building, slowly, but the deliberate pace didn’t concern Govan (his LA boss) “I knew that the longer he had the better the building would be” he told me. “Some artists add complexity with time. He carves away, till you’re left with a distilled thing.” In any case, Govan added, “I needed a decade to raise money”

Slow…over a decade…now almost two.

Zumthor designed a spa, that was completed in 1996. Slow was his MO. “For more than a decade, Zumthor interrogated the features of a mountain soak, trying to determine its quintessence.  How cold is the water in an Alpine Lake, how deep? What does the stone feel like on the sold of our feet? Would it be nice to bathe in hay? Or lie on heated gravel? (No and no.) Perhaps visitors would like to descend into a cave, engulfed in heat and steam, and contemplate life?”

Just because you are the best of the best, does not mean you can design quickly.

4. GO SLOW!

Experimental innovators
vs
Conceptual Innovators

In 2006, Balenson wrote Old Masters & Young Geniuses.  

He tried to figure out 2 types of genius…the one that peaked early in life…vs. the slow evolving types, that created their masterpieces in their 50’s or 60″.

There are two different minds, but within each group are consistencies that explained why….  I first heard of this in Malcom Gladwell’s recent book, as he was trying to fathom which kind of artist Paul Simon was.

Malcolm Gladwell took up this subject of Experimental vs Conceptual Innovators in his New Yorker article.

briefly he says…

The imprecision of their goals means that these artists rarely feel they have succeeded, and their careers are consequently often dominated by the pursuit of a single objective.

These artists repeat themselves, painting the same subject many times, and gradually changing its treatment in an experimental process of trial and error.

Each work leads to the next, and none is generally privileged over others, so experimental painters rarely make specific preparatory sketches or plans for a painting. They consider the production of a painting as a process of searching, in which they aim to discover the image in the course of making it; they typically believe that learning is a more important goal than making finished paintings. Experimental artists build their skills gradually over the course of their careers, improving their work slowly over long periods. These artists are perfectionists and are typically plagued by frustration at their inability to achieve their goal.

How similar is this pattern, with architects fumbling around with their matte boards and blades, with their 3D drawings, with time sitting at a location piecing views together…they take time…lots of time, evolving, trying, experimenting.

There are fast designers and slow ones… they just have different brains.

What about FAST Architects?

Here is an example of what happens when you work too quickly… a huge Chinese library. It only took took 3 years….from idea to opening, ….(whole my house took 2 years…)

So you know this massive building was done FAST.  Did it go well?

The higher shelves were designed  too high to reach, so all the books are all fake. Would that be an error? A library with unreachable shelves? I’d be fired for coming up with this mistake, yet, it got build, and everyone got paid.

The homogeneous lighting is harsh. It breaks Alexander’s rules… It is disorienting, lack of refuge, the “being seen” from every angle.

But, all design, IS a compromise of time, money, features, and energy…getting a project to the DONE stage is always a victory.

Who am I to judge? 

Still, even though it has flaws, many would find this  room exciting, fun, exuberant, thrilling, beautiful…. (but still, the cleaners must repel on ropes, to clean shelves… And books make of fake plates seems a bit not thought thru.

The library is MVRDV’s most rapid fast track project to date. It took just three years from the first sketch to the opening. Due to the given completion date site excavation immediately followed the design phase. The tight construction schedule forced one essential part of the concept to be dropped: access to the upper bookshelves from rooms placed behind the atrium. This change was made locally and against MVRDV’s advice and rendered access to the upper shelves currently impossible. The full vision for the library may be realized in the future, but until then perforated aluminum plates printed to represent books on the upper shelves. Cleaning is done via ropes and movable scaffolding.

 

What about me?
Fast or Slow?

My house took a long time to draw up and design…then even longer to get blueprints made…each exchange with my architect took 2 months turn round…

I was livid with the “architect”, and it drove me crazy.  But the long delays, lies, procrastination of my architect, also gave me time to keep evolving, changing ideas…and I did.

But, slow work, let the design get better…if I hurried, it would have been less astonishing.

Now, I am astonished at the great rooms, ceilings, windows and well thought out rooms.  The painfully slow process of getting my architect’s attention forced me to slow down, rethink my designs between drawing up revisions & corrections.

what if old pros
used 3D software?

I can’t help but wonder if Alexander or Zumthor  could have used 3D software, would they have finished faster?

Or was the SLOW muddling around time with hand-held objects, matte board, part of an authentic fermenting, distilling of ideas?

Maybe humans have a mental speed limit, that cannot be forced…..?

We are all different, we grow up in different generations.

Today’s generation CAN dream and draw and do authentically correct work on their computer screen… manipulating light and shadows, while listening to a podcast or book on tape.

From Duo Dickinsons article

 In recent years, the same computer that makes 2D art facilitates perfect fabrication of components in 3D printing and laser cutting to make physical modeling remarkably accurate and quick. But, again, something is lost in all this efficiency. The human touch has increasingly abandoned the studio, as the sound of clicking mouses in a silent space between those staring at screens, listening to music or podcasts via earbuds, is as antiseptic and clean as the old architecture office was messy and chaotic.

Like most things, it might take a team of people to control 3 or 4 pieces of software for a project…or to do a project efficiently.

Each tool, changes, upgrades, and improves 2 or 3 times a year, and learning the tricks, shortcuts, and cleaver ideas from others takes time…that slows you down…. but you cannot stall out… you still have to keep the focus going somehow… whether doing matte board models or 3D designs… keep the focus.

But still, know that even great Pritzker winning architects take huge parts of their lifetime to see a building be built.

That takes a lot of confidence in their ideas, or they are just suborn SOB’s…or likely both…a vice can be a virtue.

“The difference between good and bad architecture is the time you spend on it” – David Chipperfield

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