How to Design

How to ‘design’?......

Did the first people refer to any manual to cook or build houses?

This is a simple question, but it is time to reconsider this question, since it seems to be falsely believed that we can’t do a thing without ‘referring’ to any available information.  The above question, if thought over more deeply, will reveal that the process of learning something depends on observing, the act of doing and improvising. It also deals with intuition. All these dimensions constitute something much more that just facts and scientific information at our disposal or “analysis”.

One learns to swim by diving in the water, not reading a manual! Same with cooking or architecture. The problem with today’s education system is that it values information over the “act” of “doing” a thing and learning/ experiencing a phenomenon. Ideally, no school (in terms of a bounded space) is required for learning or gaining knowledge of one’s choice. After all, what is knowledge? Or better still – what is the purpose of all knowledge? One purpose maybe to know the Truth (or to understand Fear or Uncertainty). If that is the case, then knowledge production (or “revelation”) is required to be a personal act – something not standardized or mass produced. And it seems to have an intrinsic relationship with the doer. So, a process of self exploration is mandatory. Now the point to be asked is, does the current education system (and the information available of the internet) cater to the requirement of self exploration? Most people may not be aware of what self exploration is, if they haven’t experienced this process at all.

In self exploration, there is no prior guidance available in this scenario. One discovers the process by gut instincts, trial and error and intuition. Over the period of time, one learns to optimize the process and learns faster. One learns what suits one’s self. One learns about one’s own tendencies and fears. I keep on referring to fear because it exposes our limitations of thought. Fear is a ‘block’. To discover one self is to untangle and decode fear. It is a painful process. Indeed, the ‘pain’ is a result of opposition our mind creates to tackle fear. Any new situation will generate this cycle. And therefore, perhaps the essence of life, is to tackle fear at every step, so eventually, we may tend to be more free in our approach to do things.

Coming back to my field –which is design, we are required to generate a solution for a given unique situation (set of people, time, site, climate, constraints, budget, materials and so on). We are required to visualize something, that does not exist before. It is like catching some kind of a ‘ghost’. What form will that ghost takes eventually (as architecture) can’t be predicted on day one. We are required to always encounter this unknown terrain of conceiving ideas. Every design act, if carried truthfully, should make us vulnerable, give us pain and lead us to a ‘eureka’ moment. The uncertainty and the stress are inevitable. These experiences are caused because we don’t know answers to many things at the start. We are required to take millions of things in mind and think of a solution that can give best to the client (at the minimum) and to the society (at the maximum). In between, we are required to respond to time, perceptions, feelings, culture, climate, materials, construction, and so on. This is learnt, only by doing it again and again.

In an academic environment, students tend to short circuit this process by referring to “readymade” solutions offered on the internet. They forget that:

1.       Architectural response is “contextual” – very much related to the spirit of that place and time. One can’t just copy and paste a structure from one part of the world to another. This tendency seems to exist because students are not stretching their imagination to a greater extent and perhaps are not willing to critically ask questions regarding one’s taste and position. One must develop a tendency to look “beyond” form and be wary of the dizzying awe inspiring “forms” that global culture consumes. Form is nothing. It is the idea (or the thought or the value or the concern behind the making of the form) that should be understood.

We should be aware of the current scenario, where everything (information) is available in an instant and too short a time is given for synthesizing a solution.

In practice too, this short-circuiting a sincere effort has got much to do with compulsions of producing “quantum” of works, cheap labour or non recognition of talent, undercutting of costs and severe competition. We all must face this grave scenario. I am not here to say what should be done or what is right or wrong. In India, there are conditions where people struggle to survive and in such conditions, how can quality, ethics, be assured? There are scenarios where “ideal” talk of architecture just breaks down and it seems useless even to generate any kind of a hope.

Leaving such scenarios apart, can’t we give serious thought and effort to the architectural product we hope to create? Can’t we begin today?