The modern problem of design
Design itself, of course, is a process and, as in every other process, the quality of what is designed will flow from the quality of this process.
As any designer will tell you, it is the first steps in a design process which count for most. The first few strokes, which create the form, carry within them the destiny of the rest.
In the early stage we must concentrate, of course, on broad structure, on the emergent structure of the whole. A difficulty is that we do not have a good notation for the emergence of form during this early process.
The notation that architects traditionally use is a language of drawing or computer representation. Using this notation, we try to get the glimpse of an idea, and then put this down as a simple sketch, or as a simple model. But such a sketch always includes too much information, too early, so that the sketch (or computer drawing) is invariably over-specific.
Sketches and computer drawings are seductive and may be interesting. But if only 20% of the information in a sketch is based on real decisions that have been taken by a living process in the designer’s mind, and the remaining 80% is arbitrary stuff entered into the drawing only because the notation (sketching) requires it, trouble inevitably follows.
Morphological ripples
We therefore need a notation, or a way of representing emerging form, which stays closer to what is actually known at each moment. Here I wish to introduce the idea of morphological “ripples”. What I mean by a morphological ripple is a partially generated form, in which some global configuration exists in the space under consideration, but it is not yet clearly located, or dimensioned, or even characterized — it is a fieldlike configuration which, though fuzzy, firmly sets some feature of the whole, and plays a decisive role in giving character and feeling to the end result.
It is important that the first steps — the morphological ripples — should focus only on the broadest, most global features of the emerging design. Often these “global” features will extend across the full diameter of the area being considered. At each step, another “ripple” introduces one more feature of the whole.
To contain these ripples without distortion, I find it best to work, not on paper, not in a drawing on the computer screen, but in the mind’s eye, preferably while standing in the real place itself — but at the very least in the presence of an extremely realistic model showing the broad features of buildings and terrain in three dimensions.
Word pictures
More important still, as a first stage in the design process, I usually make a word picture of the building. That is, I spell out, in words, what the building is like, what it is like to arrive to it, what the space in front of it is like, how the building forms the space, what happens as you enter, what happens inside the building, where its main rooms are, what their special beauty is, what it is like to go out, from these rooms, to the outdoors. All in all, a vision of the finished building in words — as beautiful as I can make it.
Strongly resonates with what his pattern language is all about — describing things specific enough to spawn ideas and visions in your mind’s eye, but abstract enough to not force specific form. Taking advantage of categorization by picking categories on levels that say exactly as much as is needed, and no more.
Words and interior visions, when seen with your eyes closed, are more labile, more fluid, transformable and three-dimensional, than sketches or physical designs. They allow the unfolding to go forward more successfully. In the mind’s eye, the centers which evolve, one by one within the living process, are not hampered by arbitrary information and decisions that come too early.
A word picture in the mind’s eye is in a medium in which we can see only what the words describe, and nothing more. A picture on paper or computer representation, on the other hand, says too much, and often therefore contains information and decisions which are arbitrarily added, and which have not — themselves — come from use of structure-preserving process.
If I say that a building towers above me, when I approach it, this says something qualitative about its height, but does not yet describe the exact height, nor does it describe its shape. This feature may well come from a structure-preserving transformation. But if I make even the most rudimentary drawing (on computer screen or paper) the drawing has an actual height (implied by proportion), and it has many features of shape, width, volume, articulation, which have not in fact been generated by the fundamental process.
Thus the drawing pad and computer screen are poor media for an unfolding process. They are not media where a living process can easily go to work.
The word-picture, indeed, captures just what you have seen, so far, in your inner eye. And the mind’s eye, as it works when your eyes are closed, has the same power as the words. It adds little that is not actually seen, but what it does add is real, and germane, and flexible. The vision floats in your mind, a hovering clear picture, defined only in those aspects you want to define, and undefined in others.
The process of building such a vision in your mind must itself follow the differentiating process, step by step. The vision is built one morphological feature at a time. You start by saying to yourself, and seeing, one thing, the most important thing about the building. That will be captured in its height, its position, its quality, its color. It might be a brooding light that emerges from the building, or it might be the gardens which precede it, and lead to it. It is, in any case, the first global, holistic aspect of the building which you see, when you close your eyes and imagine the building as the context requires that it should be.
#book/The Nature of Order/2 The process of creating life/9 The whole#