I don’t think I would make a very good architect. I say this because I don’t think I would ever get any buildings built. Why? It’s simple…I would never finish designing them. I think one of the most challenging aspects of being in a design based field is learning that at some point the design has to STOP. This seems like an insane paradox to me; doesn’t stopping the design phase mean that the creativity ends? I think that with every project I have done I’ve always felt like new ideas and directions occur to me no matter how close the deadline is. However, with this studio more than any of my previous ones I am noticing that the reason design has to stop and conclude is so that we can focus on presentation.
I think we have all learned over the course of our past three reviews with Studio V that presentation is key. It goes back to the idea of all design being a language. The language has to be translated for the clients, architects, city officials, or whoever that we are presenting to. Even more apparent (especially after our last review, in which the studio was broken into two groups) is that when that design language is translated and presented, there better be a central concept underneath it. The central concept is the key that should drive all the moves in the design; but it should also be used to present and explain why each move was made for the audience.
I think that a lot of the heavier criticism directed against my group’s design was caused by moves that were made that didn’t fully strengthen the concept in their execution. This means that when those parts of the design were translated for the audience, they seemed weak and almost arbitrary. However, I think that realizing this fault was extremely useful in that it showed all of us that the way to move forward with both designs was to boil them down to the driving factors and then use that to combine the good parts of each design. Our task now is to unify both groups’ ideas into a cohesive proposal that will be shown to the city this coming Monday. I think we will find that the easiest way to finish refining the proposal will be to identify our main concept and use that as the driving factor in every design decision.