Do Something Beautiful

Photo via @yalearchitecture

The Struggle is Always Worth It

I arrived at architecture school with a jolt. I had previously studied engineering and, while doing so, had become interested in design. I'd begun to appreciate that while things need to be functional and work, they should also be beautiful - either in concept or form but, preferably, both. Engineering had felt like a world of facts and single-answer problems, which I enjoyed. Now I was immersed in a culture of debate and infinite possibilities, which was unnerving. There were multiple answers to architectural questions, but which solutions were the most beautiful?

A key feature of architectural education is the 'crit', an opportunity to obtain critical feedback by presenting your design work to a panel of tutors, guests and peers. My first crits didn't go well. Despite working hard for weeks, the responses I received were underwhelming.

"That's one way of thinking about it, but there are others. Have you looked into...?"

"I applaud your analysis, but could you tell me...?"

"I can sense where you wanted to go with this, but do you think you could have...?"

Always a 'but', always a question. I was familiar with the words people were using, but I didn't understand the meaning of the sentences.

Meanwhile, some of my fellow students - including those who appeared to have done very little work and thrown something together at the last minute - received glowing reviews. In these instances, the panel's responses were enthusiastic and energised. They reported their interpretation of the designs and explained why they worked.

"The results are worthy of your intentions".

"You've worked with a limited number of ideas, which has helped".

"I can see that you have successfully re-interpreted..."

The responses comprised mainly statements. There were very few questions.

The whole thing seemed both unfair and mysterious. I didn't know what to do except keep going, experiment, find my way of doing things and see if I could reduce the number of 'but-question' responses.

My first student design was for a public library. My last was for a community theatre. With the library, I wanted the design to blend into its setting. But the result was cautious and lacked ambition - much like me in my new environment - and the critics tore into it. Five years later, after many projects and reviews, my aim for the theatre design was that it should be a cultural catalyst in a run-down neighbourhood. This time, the critics heralded my design as confident, bold and inspiring. Was my solution beautiful? That's not for me to say, but I can report that the panel's response was animated, and there were many more statements than questions.

Perseverance had, eventually, paid off. Along the way, I realised that the crit wasn't an evaluation tool as it had first appeared. It was a creative improvement tool designed to raise the quality of anything you produced (if only someone had explained that earlier). What was necessary was to listen carefully to the ideas behind the comments and react to those that interested you most or that you thought might lead to better answers. Not all of them, though. That would be counter-productive. There are likely to be conflicting opinions and contradictory ways forward. It's best to consider curating, editing, and re-shaping the responses. Use them as prompts for experimentation and for trying things in different combinations.

From initially disliking the process, I later relied on it and sometimes even enjoyed it. It doesn't necessarily reduce the struggle, but it does provide a reliable method to achieve a better result. Occasionally, a beautiful one.

A beautiful solution begs no questions and appears effortless.

The process of arriving at a beautiful solution raises many questions and usually involves considerable struggle. But the struggle is always worth it.

Do something beautiful.