Author Archive for Ed Barnhart

21
May
13

Design Wisdom: Joy is Contagious

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The “J” element in my alphabetic mnemonic list for successfully practicing design is:

Joy is Contagious.

Our founding fathers almost got it right: “…life, liberty and the pursuit of…”

Joy. It seems like a dirty word, or something that’s too good to ask for. And yet we’ve all experienced it and been profoundly affected by it. Why not spread it?

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Happiness versus joy: What’s the difference?

Both joy and happiness are rooted in pleasure caused by a good or satisfying experience. But they’re not the same. Happiness lies on the surface of emotions. Joy is what emanates from within – a glowing resonance. Happiness is getting an A on the exam. Joy is mastering the subject matter.

Don’t get me wrong. Happiness is important, very important. But while happiness is about the pleasure of the moment, joy is more a “take-away” of lasting satisfaction. Joy is a triumphant contentment, a deep-seated sense of connectedness to values that have personal positive meaning. While happiness is usually fleeting, joy stays with you. I like characterize the difference as: Happiness you rent. Joy you own.

Positive passion

Dating back to the ancient Greeks, joy has been classified not merely as a feeling but as a primary passion of humanity. According to Plato, there were four cardinal passions, created by a matrix of positive vs. negative and present vs. future: Joy, Sorrow, Hope and Fear. For Plato, joy was feeling positive in the present.

It follows that there must be some benefit to focusing on what is positive about the present. And obviously this attitude isn’t restricted to designers. We can all benefit from being infected by joy!

Joy as process

Even outside the realm of design, joy can play a highly desirable role. Think of when you’re in a meeting — or any social setting, for that matter. One person radiating joy and optimism can electrify an entire group. And what follows can turn into a ripple effect — those newly inspired people infect still others with optimism. Joy is almost like a virus that spreads positive emotions and well-being.

Earlier I characterized joy as being “owned.” It inspires both a deep sense of stability and an increased capacity to reach out – to give or accept more. Joy feeds on itself. It’s the pervasive sense that you’re doing something so profoundly right or well that it’s resonating with your soul. It truly is infectious. Others want you to share it with them.

So, as a designer, think about the next time you’re making a presentation. What tool might you use to “win over” your audience and inflame them with your enthusiasm? Make the joy of what you’re proposing palpable!

Joy as effect

As designers, we typically create objects or “products” for our clients/consumers. We rarely accompany our designs or present them once they are built or produced. They leave the nest — our nest — and fly solo. What can we do to ensure that our “babies” continue to resonate with our enthusiasm?

What we can do — and indeed, the highest aspiration of what any designer should do — is to create embodied joy. What do I mean by this? Embodied joy is passionate optimism made tangible. Embodied joy is the soul of a craftsman. I think you can picture it. Think of a traditional Japanese garden, where deep knowledge of plants and climate, intense appreciation of the subtleties of place and materials, and a passionate optimism combine to create such a profound lyricism that it can’t help but infect any visitor.

We’ve all been infected by the work of the best craftsmen, artists, architects and designers alike, despite having never met them. If only our schools taught us the importance of embodied joy, our cultural artifacts would sing to more of us in our day-to-day lives.

An example from design practice

For a practitioner of architectural design, travel is essential for the soul – a great way to recharge one’s spiritual batteries. (Obviously you can learn a lot, too, but I’m talking about seeking joy.) In the summer before my final year of architecture school, I made a solo architectural pilgrimage throughout Europe to see buildings I had long appreciated from afar – with particular emphasis on Modern architecture.

After being disappointed in finding Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoy under reconstruction and closed to the public, I looked forward to arriving at his celebrated chapel of Notre Dame du Haut. I didn’t have a preconceived notion of what the experience would be like. Instead, I simply tried to have an un-premeditated, authentic experience. The chapel was open and no one was “interfering” with visitors, so I was free to roam, in and out and around…I’m guessing for a couple of hours. I don’t think I uttered a word the whole time, although there were a number of other visitors.

I examined the building from close and far, caressed details and viewed overall effects. I watched others experience the building. I watched, listened and smelled the surroundings — catching the sky and the landscape with changing light and breezes. I made sketches and recorded thoughts. I felt like the privileged seeker/archeologist – filled with admiration and seeking clues to how I might accomplish such mastery. It made me feel humble – with a sense of wonder and awe, but extraordinarily glad to be alive and fortunate to be able experience the building firsthand. I still carry that joy with me every day.

Apply your skills with joy and you will not only inspire others during the process but will leave artifacts of your efforts behind which themselves will pass joy to others.

Remember, Joy is Contagious

Ed Barnhart, principal; Always by Design

*The banner graphic feature the letter J, cropped by a square to its unique alphabetic essence, utilizing the colors Jade and Jasmine, and a photo of the joy-inducing Notre Dame du Haut.

07
May
13

Design Wisdom: Improve Iteratively

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The “I” element in my alphabetic mnemonic list for successfully practicing design is:

Improve Iteratively.

In the design process, what happens after you have that big “aha!” moment?

Arriving at a core concept or gestalt idea for a project is exhilarating, but if you don’t know how to sustain and advance the idea further, you’ll be left with something akin to a sugar crash.

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Life’s more than one big parti

For those of you who didn’t go to architecture school, the word “parti” (pronounced par-TEE) may be unfamiliar. It means the essential scheme or concept of a design – something that is both distinctly recognizable and irreducible. In other words, no matter how much you shrink or distort a design, its parti remains discernible. Often a parti can be represented as a napkin sketch diagram, made with five or ten strokes of a pen.

So, imagine that you’ve gotten to the place in the process where you have a parti or conceptual armature for your design. Now it needs to be fleshed out into a building that someone would actually want to inhabit. No one wants to live in an empty diagram, no matter how beautiful! So how do you go about fleshing out the diagram?

Working without a recipe

As you might imagine, it’s a long journey from an initial parti to realizing an inhabitable, indeed enjoyable building. And guess what? It’s anything but a linear path. Fundamentally, design is the art of cooking without a recipe. (If you’re cooking from a recipe you aren’t designing, you’re simply replicating a previously realized design effort.)

You develop your “cooking” ability by using your learned skills, tools, and intuition. Starting with a core ingredient, you assemble other ingredients using your best judgment to create a flavorful concoction that you hope the intended recipients will savor.

What do you think of when you picture a chef at work? Someone constantly tasting, observing, smelling, touching and listening to everything going on in the kitchen. Total sensory and mental engagement.

It’s a matter of research and development

So what do you, as an engaged designer, do to develop your “soup,” as it were? Add an ingredient, then another and another – all the while with engaged senses and intellect, receiving and processing the feedback from your client and perhaps from colleagues as well.

Rarely can you calculate the exact amounts or cooking times in advance. It’s a matter of trial and adjustment — in effect, a taste-testing process. Going from the initial taste of the basic ingredients to the iterative stages of testing, you gradually work your way to an ideal mingling of increasingly nuanced flavors.

As you can see, creating a successful design isn’t a simple matter of filling in a pre-ordained pattern or structure. Instead, it requires the discovery of an original pattern, followed by a nuanced fine-tuning of the basic context using the resources at your disposal.

An example from design practice

A touchstone design experience came early in my career — not by developing a design of my own, but in experiencing another artist’s work unfold in a totally unrelated field. The artist was the legendary jazz pianist Keith Jarrett, making his tour of 53 solo performances in 1983. By that time I had discovered his seminal album The Köln Concert. I have to confess, though, that my decision to go to the concert was as much about having an opportunity to see the venue in which he was performing as it was about seeing him actually perform. The venue was the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall in Upstate New York, completed in 1875 and now a National Historic Landmark. Renowned for its excellent acoustics, it retains its original seating arrangement to this day.

The performance that evening was entirely acoustic piano. He performed without printed materials, relying entirely on his memory and improvisational skills. The fluidity of tempo changes and clear flights of manual dexterity were amazing to witness. But one particular passage, used for probably not more than a minute or so, transformed me. About a third of the way into the concert, using a repetitive short passage of low notes in a rather percussive manner, he started to subtly modulate the tempo – slightly slower, then slightly faster, then back. All of a sudden it was as if some giant engine kicked in. The entire hall reverberated. He eased back out of it and then back into it again as if to assure us, and perhaps himself, that it wasn’t a mistake. He was playing to the natural resonance of the hall. It was an amazing testimonial to bringing skill, awareness of context and nuanced tuning together to produce something extraordinary.

Fully engage your senses and intellect in an iterative, incremental process to navigate unknown territories with the greatest potential for unprecedented success.

Remember, Improve Iteratively 

Ed Barnhart, principal; Always by Design

*The banner graphic feature the letter I, cropped by a square to its unique alphabetic essence, utilizing the colors Ivory and Indigo, and a photo of pianist Improving Iteratively.

23
Apr
13

Design Wisdom: Humans have needs

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The “H” element in my alphabetic mnemonic list for successfully practicing design is:

Humans have needs.

When was the last time you were somewhere you thought you didn’t belong?

Probably within the last 24 hours. I’m talking about buildings and places where your comfort as a human user seemed to have been the last thing anyone took seriously.

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Who are you designing for?

Surprisingly, it often seems that the accommodation of users and their needs is secondary to some other agenda. How many times have you walked into a corporate lobby and said “Wow!” (wondering why they created such a vast 3-story glass-walled atrium) only to end up feeling sorry for the poor receptionist, blinded by sun glare and buffeted by blasts of frigid outdoor air every time the door opened?

You may be the owner or architect, but the question is the same: Who are you designing for? Are you designing to impress your competition? Are you designing things simply “because you can”? Or are you actually designing to deliver the best experience for the users?

Good design shouldn’t ever have to say it’s sorry. By that I mean to say that a well-designed building or space doesn’t require apologies for what it didn’t get right – because good design means getting the things that matter right. And guess what? People matter. One of the most fundamental aspects of “getting it right” is achieving ease of use and providing a sense of comfort for the occupants.

Suffering for (your) art

It’s fine for designers to suffer for their art. That’s their choice. However, they should never impose suffering on their clients without their consent. As a designer I would argue that our mandate, in terms of suffering for our art, is to achieve the “both-and” of beauty and functionality, not allowing one to fall aside at the expense of the other. Owners and architects alike should take as “standard operating procedure” that the buildings they commission or design both inspire and comfort users.

Interestingly, the size or complexity of a project isn’t relevant to whether it can offer both inspiration and comfort. Let’s look at a few notable famous failures and successes. All of them are inspiring. (They wouldn’t be in the history books if they didn’t inspire.) However, only some of them are comforting.

In terms of size and functional demands, single-family homes should top the list for comfort and ready accommodation of user needs. Apparently Mies van der Rohe needed a reminder: after completion of his all-glass Farnsworth House, Mrs. Farnsworth sued him for creating an “unlivable house.” The Franks didn’t fare much better when architect Peter Eisenman created a house that forced the owner couple to sleep in separate beds.

Museums arguably have more complex functional demands to meet – and yet they can achieve sublime comfort. For example, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (located, oddly enough, in Denmark) is quietly nestled, in a very unassuming way, in a residential neighborhood north of Copenhagen. Your experience as a visitor is like walking through a garden in full bloom in beautiful weather. Similarly, architect Louis Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, offers a tranquil oasis – heroic in its transcendent luminosity, yet humble in scale.

An example from design practice

In most projects there are power struggles among the various stakeholders. Corporate departments or married partners often fight against a real or perceived constraint to obtain more of whatever their interests are. In these cases, your role as designer is as referee or counselor. Surprisingly, you often find yourself fighting to defend the most basic human accommodations in your designs.

In one case, I was working for a very dynamic and forward-looking CEO who had commissioned my firm to design some large meeting spaces for his institution. At some point, in exasperation, he demanded that the number of toilets be reduced by half. I explained that the number shown was required by the building code as proportional to the number of people being accommodated in the meeting spaces. When I asked why the restroom quantity was a problem, his response was: “I can’t find donors for bathrooms.” In the end, the code requirements were met – but not without my insisting that I would resign from the job if he insisted that we provide any fewer! Funny thing is, after graduating from architecture school, I had never imagined myself fighting a client in order to provide more toilets!

As architects we revel in designing spaces that inspire. Yet it is equally important that we provide comfort and utility for the joy of the humans using our buildings.

Remember, Humans have needs

Ed Barnhart, principal; Always by Design

*The banner graphic feature the letter H, cropped by a square to its unique alphabetic essence, utilizing the colors Harvest Gold and Hunter Green, and a photo of a Human happily hanging out.

09
Apr
13

Design Wisdom: Get Grounded

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The “G” element in my alphabetic mnemonic list for successfully practicing design is:

Get Grounded.

Riddle: What do electrical work and artistic painting have in common?

Answer: They both require being grounded. Granted, they have very different grounding techniques, but the point is: any work requires a prepared context, or ground, upon which to safely rest.

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Figure versus ground

Every designer is well acquainted with the formal distinction of figure versus ground. In my last article I talked about the need to establish a focal point or figurative aspect in any design project. In this context the importance of having a ground is in clearing away, making space for the figure to stand out and be appreciated.

If you want to make a statement, verbally or architecturally, you figuratively need to have the floor. If we were to take this to a deeper level, we might say you need to have the ground. One might be tempted, then, to think that it’s a bit like public speaking. A speaker’s first task is to gain the audience’s attention by becoming the focal point… in other words, by asserting control over the space and silencing any peripheral noise.

Are you making a speech?

Unfortunately, all too many designers end their conception of grounding with this clearing away or silencing. Yes, this approach can work for a small minority of projects (a public monument, for example) where you want the finished design to stand alone delivering a resonant soliloquy. But in most cases, architecture isn’t, or shouldn’t be, about giving a speech. You need to find a different type of grounding.

A better metaphor for most architecture design commissions might be constructing a conversation. In this approach, grounding is about understanding, acknowledging and reshaping your environment or context. Grounding becomes engagement with your neighbors. You can neither afford to ignore what people are saying nor simply repeat what they are saying and expect to remain welcome.

Using this analogy, it’s clear that the most valuable contribution of the designer is neither shouting down nor silencing the others in the room, but rather in shifting and elevating the ongoing discourse. The design process starts by finding common ground before you find the figure.

An example from design practice

At a corporate level, many business organizations seek to ground themselves by formulating mission statements, branding concepts and strategic plans. And yet, my experience tells me that such strategies rarely take on a tangible role in developing an architectural project.

Coming full circle back to electricians, a notable recent exception in my practice was in developing a new regional headquarters for NECA, the National Electrical Contractors Association. Working with these electrical contractors I was blessed with a client group who took their mission and constituents seriously and used them to effectively to ground their project.

Only rarely does a client’s full “wish list” find its way into a completed building. Even without “tangible” limitations – funding, for example, or the restrictions of the physical site — some degree of grounding  becomes essential if you want to shape a project into a more vital and distinctive whole.

My intake from the design meetings with the NECA Board was that they would repeatedly return to their core mission and strategic plan to balance the program and design decisions. Frequent questions included: Should a visitor’s first impression be about member services, trade mentorship or public outreach? Is a particular feature adding value for membership at the expense of the staff, or visa versa? Are we anticipating and encouraging growth or supporting a static vision?

This continual looking back to the core objectives of the organization proved to be really grounding for the project – both in the sense of stripping away the “noise” of unnecessary frills, and (to use another electrical term) ensuring connectivity between the organizational purpose and the resulting facilities.

Any successful design requires a prepared ground – the creation of which entails both clearing away and rooting to the established fabric of the surrounding environment.

Remember, Get Grounded 

Ed Barnhart, principal; Always by Design

*The banner graphic feature the letter G, cropped by a square to its unique alphabetic essence, utilizing the colors Grape and Green, and a photo of a Grounded plug.

26
Mar
13

Design Wisdom: Find the Figure

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The “F” element in my alphabetic mnemonic list for successfully practicing design is:

Find the Figure. 

When was the last time you were accused of not seeing the forest for the trees?

In our caffeinated, attention-deficit inducing Information Age, the deluge of imagery in our daily lives makes it far more likely that you’ll fail to notice, let alone get captivated by, individual trees. And yet, successful design requires that we recover the ability to do so.

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Problem Solving

As a designer you’re typically hired to solve a specific problem. It could be designing a website or a skyscraper. Sometimes your client comes to you without a clue about where to begin because the problem seems so complicated. Other times, what looks like a simple task at the outset quickly gets bogged down in conflicting details and secondary agendas. Either way, most design projects at some point run the risk of capsizing under too heavy a burden of options and information. How do you work through all the details to find a cohesive solution? Where do you begin?

Being Subjective

Your primary skill as a designer isn’t your likeness to a computer, crunching huge multi-variable simultaneous equations. Your skill is in your subjectivity (and your persuasiveness, but we’ll get to that in a subsequent article). What’s the root word of subjectivity? Subject. A singularity. A point of reference selected by someone with a unique vision, just as an artist selects the central figure for a portrait or still life painting.

But let me be clear:  while the “figure” I’m talking about can be a concrete object, like a table or a tree, it doesn’t need to be. It can be a color, shape, concept, or feeling. The essential idea is that whatever it is, it is a palpable entity. This thingness can be achieved in many different ways, but the result is in differentiating one tree as unique within the forest. It is the capturing of focus that enables meaning to be created and savored. As a designer, one of your most valuable skills lies in making this subjective choice of what that the focus or figure of a given project will be.

Putting a Stake in the Ground

Think of going on a camping trip. At some point you’ll need to find a spot to spend the night. More often than not, you select that spot by finding a figure that serves as a focal point. It might be a view to a distant mountain or the flatness of a large rock at your feet. Finding a figure gives you a starting point. Establishing that figure puts everything else in some kind of relationship to it. Rather than roaming aimlessly in an undifferentiated forest, your perceptions and actions become relational to the thing you’ve claimed.

Granted, having found the figure doesn’t mean your work is done. Think of it as Thomas Edison’s 1% inspiration in relation to the remaining 99% perspiration of work. You still have to shape the subsequent relationships with everything else to make them meaningful and positive. But once you’ve settled on the focal point or theme of your project, you’ve essentially built the foundation for everything that follows.

An Example from Design Practice

A project of mine currently nearing completion is a residential retreat with guesthouse in the Belgrade Lakes region of Maine. The client acquired the site for its primal natural qualities – a lakefront property surrounded by a mature forest, mostly hemlock. As with any project it had its share of impediments. The 10-acre site had three major zones: a moderately sloped portion which had previously been logged a decade earlier, a steeply sloped portion with virgin forest, and a low, boggy wetlands area. The most readily accessible portions of the site had previously been left visibly scarred from the earlier logging activity. The areas of greatest beauty and best views were deep within the site, heavily forested and steeply sloped with rock ledges just below the surface. The wetlands areas, of course, were environmentally protected and needed to be kept intact.

From the outset of the project it was clear that how we dealt with the existing conditions of the site would be the key to success. We gathered as much information about the site as possible, including surveying the slopes, mapping the major trees, and assessing view sheds. So, you could say we began with a soft- focus impression of site, without knowing the key to knitting the assets and challenges of the site together into a seamless whole.

At some point during our surveying I saw one remarkable tree — a mature hemlock — whose deeply textured bark was being highlighted by the direct rays of a late afternoon sun. Suddenly I realized that the central motif of our project would be a tree – more specifically, seeing a tree through the forest. The story of trees became our narrative glue – starting with reclaiming much of the original logging road as our site access. The largest area of the logging slash became a meadow within which we sited the guesthouse. The site for the main house was nestled into the wooded hillside, enabling approaching visitors to view past the house, through the under-canopy silhouettes of tree trunks down to the shimmering blue surface of the lake below.

While much of our effort was spent in preserving trees and shaping views of them (and through them), some trees inevitably required removal. Rather than treating them as nuisance waste, we chose to transform them into a featured element of our project. With careful handling we stacked the felled trees under a temporary shelter and air-cured them into building-usable logs. The logs became the “signature” front features of both houses – serving as loggia columns on the guesthouse and primary exposed structural elements for the roof and porches of the main residence. A visit to the property now inspires admiration for the many faces of trees, in all their forms of beauty and strength.

Finding a specific idea or object to provide a palpable presence in a project enables you to build meaningful relationships with the greater whole. 

Remember, Find the Figure

Ed Barnhart, principal; Always by Design

*The banner graphic features the letter F, cropped by a square to its unique alphabetic essence, utilizing the colors Fuchsia and Flax, and a photo of a Forest

12
Mar
13

Design Wisdom: Engage Enthusiastically

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The “E” element in my alphabetic mnemonic list for successfully practicing design is:

Engage Enthusiastically.

Are you enthusiastically engaged and passionately sharing the work you are doing?

If you’re not feeling fully engaged in your work, and you’re not enthusiastically engaging others in your vision, it’s far less likely that your endeavor will succeed.

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The Enthusiasm Litmus Test

Be honest with yourself: are you excited about what you’re doing (or trying to do)? Are you engaged and passionate about your work as a design professional? If not, something needs to change. It might be your attitude, or it might be your circumstances. But this much is clear: you need to take the lead in cultivating your own enthusiasm and sense of engagement.

If you’re experiencing a deficit of enthusiasm, it usually means you’re not optimistic about the process and/or the results you anticipate. Ask yourself why you have doubts. Examining your attitude should spark in you a quest to at least identify the source of the problem. Once you identify it, you’ll either be able to remedy the situation or find that you can’t. But even in the worst-case scenario, you can seize upon the enthusiasm you feel for other aspects of the project rather than letting your doubts cast a pall over the entire works.

The point is, if you want to get others on board, you need to be selling them on your ideas. Nothing builds success and buy-in better than your enthusiasm for the ways and means of realizing a project.

So, What About Others?

Architecture involves a client, designer, materials suppliers and a builder at the very least. They’re all dynamic and essential players, so their engagement is crucial. Think of the gears of a watch or bike that need to interlock to produce results.

At the most basic level, engagement is about communication. The designer must be able to open channels of communication with as many stakeholders in each project as possible at the outset, then work to assure the open flow of information for the duration of the project.

When I was fresh out of architecture school, I used to picture the ideal client as someone who told you what they wanted, handed you a check and said they’d be back a year later for the finished product after taking a ‘round-the-world cruise. While the part about being paid in advance would be nice (!), trust me, you don’t want an absentee client – despite how tempting it might seem. If a client disappears during the design process and fails to communicate with you, I can assure you that you’ll be dealing with a different person when he returns. Even if you designed something perfectly suited to his expressly stated yearnings a year ago, his sense of what he wants will have changed during the course of his adventures.

You can see that communication is a key to engagement. But it’s not the only key. Think of it as the “what” of engaging a project participant. The “how” of engaging them is enthusiastically. Enthusiasm conveys the feelings — your feelings – your excitement and confidence about things to come. Enthusiasm is contagious. People naturally want to be part of a winning team. Your enthusiasm is critical in assuring them that they’ve found that team.

An Example from Design Practice

My first year out of college was the most demoralizing year of my life. Although I haven’t taken a poll, I’m guessing this isn’t uncommon among graduates of architecture, fine arts, and design schools. The reason? The transition from the lofty idealism of academia to the grittiness of real-world practice is akin to a high-speed car crash. Gone is the sense that you’re striving to change the world – replaced instead with the brain-numbing ennui of wading through an endless stream of “redline” drafting corrections.

The first major project I worked on that first summer out of school was for 185 units of public housing in Upstate New York. At the time hand-drafting was still the norm, and I can’t tell you how many times I had to “mirror-image” or otherwise make repetitive design changes to 185 bathrooms or kitchens by hand. The “joke” among the four drafting interns was: “Don’t draw more in the morning than you can erase in the afternoon.” Boredom and cynicism ruled. After a year, the corrosive nature of that environment finally got to me and I realized that I needed to move along for my own survival.

The school-to-practice transition probably isn’t any easier now than it has been for earlier generations of graduates. It pays to remember, though, that it’s not someone else’s job to make sure you stay enthusiastic and engaged. At least initially, you probably won’t find everything you’re looking for in one place. You might have to assemble your life a la carte to create the right conditions for enthusiastic engagement.  Don’t shy away from this task: it will help ensure your sanity and success.

You are the steward of your own passions. It’s your responsibility to actively cultivate your interests and enthusiasms so you can engage others with your optimism.

Remember, Engage Enthusiastically

Ed Barnhart, principal; Always by Design

*The banner graphic feature the letter E, cropped by a square to its unique alphabetic essence, utilizing the colors Eggplant and Emerald, and a photo of Engaged gears.

26
Feb
13

Design Wisdom: Delight in Diversity

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The “D” element in my alphabetic mnemonic list for successfully practicing design is:

Delight in Diversity.

Why is diversity in design practice so often simply tolerated rather than enthusiastically embraced?

If your business is business as usual, you might think of diversity as the foe of efficiency. But if you’re seeking new clientele and ways to adapt to an ever-changing world, diversity could be your best ally.

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Diversity: Friend or Foe?

Diversity tends to be the enemy of streamlining, simplifying and doing things quicker. Diversity gets in the way of creating a consistent style or process. When we need to map out a different approach to a design problem, we have to step outside the box. This takes time.

By contrast, the “business as usual” approach automatically reduces or eliminates choices or options. This means greater efficiency — less time spent categorizing, selecting, organizing. Therefore, the threat posed by diversity would appear to be the risk of not producing something at the lowest possible cost.

But what’s the real cost? Even if you’ve carved out a specialized niche, your goal isn’t turning out identical widgets at the lowest cost. The basic premise of design is the creation of something that is different, so the celebration of diversity should be axiomatic. In practice, it often appears to be the opposite. Design diversity among competitors is often mistakenly seen as threatening. But think about it:  people doing things differently from you aren’t your competitors; your competitors are the ones doing the same thing as you.

First, a Global Perspective

Before we look at the dynamics of your business and competition, let’s gain a broader perspective as to why diversity is important. First, the more tools we have at hand, the more adeptly we can fashion solutions that meet our needs (and the needs of our clients). A hammer is great for driving a nail, but not so good at drilling a hole.

Secondly, we live in an ever-changing environment that defies human comprehension. The resources we use and value today invariably will not be the same as those we will find useful tomorrow. A skill that languishes unappreciated today might suddenly be in high demand tomorrow.  A diversity of options boosts your capacity to adapt to changes. In this light, diversity can be thought of as a form of wealth that supplies you with a contingency plan for your future.

It becomes obvious, then, that cultivating diversity is essential to your long-term success. But what value does diversity bring to your day-to-day practice?

The Practical Utility of Diversity

On one level, we’d all like to practice design without competition. But that’s not a real option – especially in the shrinking world of our global economy. In fact, designers need competition in order to do their best work. Competition forces all of us to question what we do and why. Because it forces us to dig deeper, competition ultimately serves as a driving engine of evolution and growth.

In the marketplace, sameness is your worst enemy. Picture yourself surveying a store shelf. If everything on the shelf seems to be indistinguishable from the next item, you (as a consumer) will either grab the closest one or find the cheapest one. Trust me, as a designer you don’t want a potential client selecting you based simply on convenience or cost. Your success as a designer depends on being recognized as different. This is the day-to-day utility of diversity for your practice.

For the good of your practice, you want to cultivate and emphasize that diversity in the marketplace. This doesn’t mean that you should try to embody diversity single-handedly. You have to focus on your passions and what you do best. Use the diversity of the marketplace to highlight the areas that differentiate you from your competitors. For instance, there are many architects doing work very different from what I choose to do. I genuinely admire and find inspiration in the diversity of work presented by others – but I’m not interested in doing what they’re doing. My best successes are when clients (and prospective clients) can see the diversity I bring to the marketplace and engage me because of what sets me apart.

An Example from Design Practice

The value of diversity can be readily apprehended through travel. My first trip overseas was to study in Copenhagen, Denmark. By then I’d seen countless images of centuries-old European cities with bold insertions of cutting-edge contemporary work. Think of the Pompidou Centre (a.k.a. “Beaubourg”) by Piano+Rogers, the Lloyds of London building by Richard Rogers, or the more recent “Gherkin” by Foster and Partners.

As an American in Copenhagen, I was surprised and impressed by a sensibility that embraced both old and new. Here was diversity of design within continuously unfolding cloth, rather than as competing rivals. This principle was driven home most forcefully through my contact within the intimate scale of small individual shops and dwellings I encountered in the historic center of Copenhagen. For instance, a street-front shop might be housed in an 18th-century brick and stone building, where the heft and coarseness of the original materials was lovingly preserved along with a deep patina of wear, but skillfully contrasted with new frameless glass display windows and exposed, sleek contemporary lighting and mechanical systems. The effect was palpable — old and new alike gaining potency through juxtaposition with design elements that represented “otherness.” Here was a beautiful example of vitality emerging from diversity.

Think of your design practice as an object. Like an object it gains its value in large part by standing in contrast to those around it – in other words, by asserting the power of diversity.

Remember, Delight in Diversity

Ed Barnhart, principal; Always by Design

*The banner graphic feature the letter D, cropped by a square to its unique alphabetic essence, utilizing the colors Drab and Daffodil, and a photo of Diverse tools.

12
Feb
13

Design Wisdom: Create Courage

By AxD 2 Comments
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The “C” element in my alphabetic mnemonic list for successfully practicing design is:

          Create Courage.

                  Design is a journey to a new place. New means risk. Why go there?

If you don’t have a reason to take a risk, you won’t. Courage means having a bold vision that overshadows the difficulty of taking the first step and persevering to reach a goal.

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Why do you design?

Before considering how and why to take risks, ask yourself “Why do I design? Why is the client hiring me?” Namely: to make a difference. To create something that is different.

“Different” means risk. If you can’t accept risk, you’ll be consigned to maintaining the status quo. So, let me repeat: “Why would someone hire you?” For the new places you can take them. Your brand is the sum of the risks you are willing to take.

Start with yourself

As a designer you undoubtedly strive to make the proverbial “better mousetrap” (or at least one that commands attention). If you believe that making something better means turning it upside down, then you’ll need the courage to face whomever or whatever you’re accountable to – a boss, a client or the bottom line of your business ledger.

The path to courage is redefining failure. Most of us are conditioned to see failure as having made a mistake (or being told that we’ve made a mistake). Cautious souls keep reminding us that practice makes perfect, and the pursuit of perfection overtakes our need to make a difference. In other words, if you’re not doing the same thing over and over again, you’re bound to be making mistakes as you take risks on new ideas. This mindset is fatal to creativity.  Condition yourself to see not taking risk as failure.

One of the lessons I learned from working with Peter Bohlin, FAIA, was his ability to take mistakes in stride. At a design critique he would invariably start a sentence with something like, “Well, I might be wrong here, but let’s try this and see where it takes us.” Ever armed with sincerity of intent, Peter seemed incapable of feeling embarrassed by an awkward idea or change of direction. That was inspiring. It’s not coincidental that he was selected by the AIA as their Gold Medal recipient in 2010.

Make it happen

All committed designers struggle to do the best work they can. A common lament is: “I just haven’t been lucky enough to find the right client.” The truth is, clients, and opportunities in general, are more often made than found.

Every client carries a load of fears and inertia similar to your own. Start by doing your due diligence. Hear out the problems and fears. Do your research and analysis of options and alternatives. Assess risks and possible consequences. Then find the compelling vision to get past them.

Your mission as a designer is to engage and excite yourself, your client and everyone else on the project sufficiently so as to redefine failure as not pursuing the compelling vision. If your vision is powerful enough, it pushes past the risks in the foreground and enables everyone’s courage to go the distance.

An example from design practice

The Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF) is a cultural institution devoted to preserving the history of the chemical sciences and promoting awareness of the role of chemistry in society. CHF’s headquarters faces Independence National Historical Park in the historic Old City section of Philadelphia, two blocks from the Liberty Bell. Their anchoring structure is a five-story historic 19th century granite bank building.

Following several renovations to their existing buildings, CHF decided to move ahead with its first addition – a new wing that would accommodate meetings for up to 300 people. When I was hired for the project, the construction manager had already been selected and I was assigned to sub-contract to them as the designer side of a joint design-build team.

Given the historic context of the CHF headquarters on a street lined with 19th century masonry facades, both the client and my construction partner assumed that the addition would also be masonry. I saw this as problematic. First of all, we didn’t have a budget sufficient to construct anything as ambitious as the historic bank building. Just as important, the institution was interested in distinguishing itself as preeminent in its field. Philadelphia is a masonry city. You don’t distinguish yourself by being indistinguishable from your neighbors.

My client needed the courage to go in an unexpected direction. I saw the existing historic building as embodying half of the institutional mission – preserving history. Now we needed to create its complement: a structure that embodied the present and future of chemistry. What if the exterior were to be constructed using materials from the periodic table of elements? After researching potential materials I settled on using solid zinc panels as the dominant element. The oxidized grey of the panels not only demonstrated “chemistry in action” but also harmonized with color of the historic granite.

The CHF addition was the first zinc rainscreen panel building ever constructed in Philadelphia. It went on to receive several design awards as a lesson in how to successfully utilize contemporary design in a historic context.

Redefining failure as not pursuing a vision can give you the courage you need to overcome the fear of making mistakes along the way.

Remember, Create Courage.

Ed Barnhart, principal; Always by Design

*The banner graphic feature the letter C, cropped by a square to its unique alphabetic essence, utilizing the colors Cobalt and Catawba, and a photo of surfer with the courage to ride a wave.

29
Jan
13

Design Wisdom: Balance Beautifully

By AxD Leave a Comment
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The “B” element in my alphabetic mnemonic list for successfully practicing design is:

          Balance beautifully.

                 Whether you’re arranging flowers or designing a building, this concept is crucial.

We tend to think of balance as a state of harmony between extremes. We find it with difficulty and lose it too easily. Certainly, the process of finding (and maintaining) balance must be at the heart of any design practice. But balance alone isn’t enough. It’s really just the beginning.

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Begin by balancing

Finding balance is about the process of inquiry – learning what works. In terms of design, finding your balance really means learning your craft. Without a fundamental understanding or mastery of craft, it’s as though you’re a toddler learning to walk – you put all your effort into merely staying upright. You might have plenty of brilliant artistic ideas, but unless you can demonstrate mastery of your craft, you’re not likely to communicate your creative ideas effectively enough to have them embraced.

Basic mastery is about achieving fluency in a medium. It’s like learning a language – the process by which you gain the ability to explore ideas and communicate them to others.

Learning your craft means equipping yourself with a first-rate set of intellectual, creative and professional tools. This learning process has a pretty steep admission price for architects. Aesthetic mastery alone involves developing an understanding of how to work with proportion, color, form, texture, and light and shadow. Furthermore, the craft of an architect requires an ability to translate ideas to real “bricks and mortar”. A fundamental grasp of the nature of materials, structure, technology, and construction methods is essential if you want to gain competence in real-world practice.

Creating beauty

In truth, though, finding your balance is a lifelong pursuit. Even masters of the craft continually try to take their mastery to the next level. This is where beauty comes into play.

Unfortunately, since the advent of Modernism, the concept of “beauty” is often seen as being morally suspect or superficial. However, I’d challenge anyone to look at Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion and say that a search for beauty wasn’t integral to the design of the building.

Seeking a deeper level of balance is what I’m referring to as the search for beauty. Without beauty, all that remains is utility. Beauty is the notion of investing a level of craft sufficiently to convey a sense of effortlessness or grace. Think of a ballet. If the principal dancer were grimacing in pain, wobbling through her steps, the audience would hardly be enchanted. Harnessing techniques (or tools) adeptly enough so that they’re no longer the focus enables you to envelop others in a search for something larger and deeper – a place where beauty is revealed.

It is significant that beauty is subjective. Your searching to achieve a level of beauty puts you in control of how to harness your craft. Your unique vision and set of abilities will differentiate you from everyone else as you seek and ultimately find what balances beautifully.

An example from design practice

Shortly after becoming a registered architect I joined the office of Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates in Philadelphia. It was a heady time for the firm, which was involved in a multitude of projects — including museums in London, Seattle and Austin. My first project there was working on the new Sainsbury Wing of England’s National Gallery of Art.

Venturi’s three-story office was crammed with models, full-sized mock-ups and drawings tacked up everywhere. At first I wondered why there seemed to be an infinite number of versions of any given portion of each project. But as I worked on the museum addition, I came to understand the vast difference between merely “solving the problem” and finding a beautiful balance.

In addition to being a brilliant theorist, Robert Venturi had an incredible sense of proportion and visual rhythm. Nothing was ever “just pick a product.” Even the skylights for the galleries, visible only from neighboring buildings, were composed as minor fugues — featuring four mullion sizes and carefully proportioned glass panes. Every detail of that project was considered and re-considered for meanings beyond utility. As a result, the pieces of the completed project don’t just balance… they balance beautifully.

Only after we’ve attained sufficient mastery of our craft — so that it no longer consumes our conscious thoughts (or those of our benefactors) — do we have the freedom to invest our fullest imagination and effort toward shaping designs that inspire.

Remember, Balance beautifully

Ed Barnhart, principal; Always by Design

*The banner graphic features the letter B, cropped by a square to its unique alphabetic essence, utilizing the colors Burgundy and Brass, and a photo of boulders balanced at Stonehenge.

 

22
Jan
13

Design Wisdom: Anticipate but…

By AxD 1 Comment
Categories: Uncategorized
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The first element in my alphabetic mnemonic list for successfully practicing design is:

          Anticipate but…

            This involves a dance between two forces – preparedness and stillness.

Consider meetings, for example. They’re a regular fixture of any architecture or design practice.  It doesn’t really matter what kind of meeting it is — it could be with a client, consultant, or in-house design team. How do you arrive at a meeting? Prepared.

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Preparedness

What does “arriving prepared” really look like? Many people think that unless they’re running the meeting or making a presentation, all they need to do is show up and stay awake. Let me tell you, if someone felt it was important enough for you to attend a meeting, just “showing up” won’t cut it. I don’t care if you’re an intern who just got hired yesterday… you need to be actively prepared.

Being prepared starts with anticipating what should, could or can’t happen in any given situation. You need to get yourself mentally engaged well before a meeting begins. Who is attending and why? What’s the agenda? Is there a hidden agenda? What do you want to get from the meeting? Is there something you can offer?

Even if you’re not a designated presenter at a meeting, preparing actively lifts your participation to a higher level. It means that you’ve probably come up with questions and maybe done some research or talked to others beforehand. Your curiosity and preparation help you get ready to connect ideas, while others are just warming up. You might not even utter a word at the meeting, but I guarantee that your deeper level of engagement will pay off by enhancing your creativity, knowledge and professionalism.

Stillness

The “but…” portion of the mnemonic title above refers to stillness. It means: Don’t rush in with preconceived assumptions or with answers. In the world of design, where creative thought is paramount, we often refer to having a “beginner’s mind.” This doesn’t mean you need to be a blank slate. It’s more about having receptive capacity – the ability to take in more. Don’t underestimate the importance of this ability. It represents the “still” side of being prepared, the anticipation of new ideas.

After arriving prepared to your meeting, stay still. You might think you have the answers or know the outcome of whatever endeavor you’re undertaking. But don’t assume that you’re right. In almost any activity, your collaborators will have different ideas as to what the problems are and how to define success. It takes time for everyone to get onto the same playing field. That playing field may or may not be the one that was in your head when you entered the meeting.

If you leave a meeting thinking exactly what you did when you entered the room, the meeting was a failure. Entering a meeting prepared – to both absorb and offer new questions and ideas – means that you and everyone else in the meeting are likely to leave in a different (and better) place than when you arrived.

An example from design practice
Midway into the design of a university library addition we were having difficulty reconciling the client’s “wish list” of needs with their available funding. A meeting was called with the client. In anticipation of that meeting, I prepared by looking at alternative storage systems, trade-offs between seating and media storage, remote storage options, cheaper construction techniques and a host of other strategies for packing the proverbial ten pounds into the five-pound bag. Nevertheless, I was anticipating a cranky client.

I began the meeting, not by verbalizing my assumption that the client would be disappointed, but rather by inviting him to join me in sharing ideas. Fortunately the client had anticipated and arrived prepared for our meeting too. He had evaluated options for: a more robust program of interlibrary loan participation, elimination of the redundancy of materials stored in multiple format types, and increased reliance on digital sources of information, including a variety of on-line subscriptions.

By the end of the meeting we were both pleasantly surprised. Instead of reconciling ourselves to not being able to achieve the original objectives, we found ourselves re-energized – envisioning the library in an expanded role for social engagement on campus. We were able to formulate a workable approach for: meeting the collection needs, while increasing the quantity and diversity of seating and meeting places, and at a cost lower than initially thought possible.

That’s what happens when prepared minds come together: you can always expect to arrive someplace other than where you expected. And remember, this dance of “Anticipate but…” applies to virtually every phase of the design process, not just meetings.

Remember, Anticipate but…

Ed Barnhart, principal; Always by Design

*The banner graphic features the letter A, cropped by a square to its unique alphabetic essence, utilizing the colors Avocado and Azure, and a photo of river rapids representing an anticipated journey.


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