Status Updates From 101 Things I Learned in Arc...

Just do something. When a design problem is so overwhelming as to be almost paralyzing, don’t wait for clarity to arrive before you start drawing. Drawing is not simply a way to describe a design solution, but is itself a way to learn about the problem you are trying to solve.

The Chinese symbol for crisis is made up of two characters: one indicating “danger,” the other “opportunity.”

Limitations foster creativity.

“Always design a thing considering it in its larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a town plan.” -Eliel Saarinen

Architecture is an exercise in truth. . . Architecture is an exercise in narrative.

A good building reveals things about itself when viewed from different distances.

An appreciation of asymmetrical balance is considered by many to demonstrate a higher order thinking ability.

Beauty is due more to the harmonious relationships between the elements of a composition than to the elements themselves.

If you can’t explain your ideas to your grandmother in terms she understands, you don’t know your subject well enough.

Simplicity is the worldview of the child or uninformed adult, fully engaged with his or her own experience and blissfully unaware of what lies beneath the surface of immediate reality. . . Simplicity is an enlightened vision of reality.

Any aesthetic quality is usually enhanced by the presence of a counterpoint. When it comes to bringing a particular aesthetic quality to a space, element, or building, try to include an opposite or counter posing quality for maximum impact.

“I like the view but I like to sit with my back to it.” - Gertrude Stein

Most of the most effective creatives engage in a process of meta-thinking, or “thinking about thinking.”

Having the best design process - and not a perfectly executed project - is the most valuable thing you can do.

Good designers are quick on their feet . . . A poor designer will try to hold on to a failed game and be a patch trying to fix problems, thus losing the integrity of the whole.

“Science presumably works with bits and pieces and pieces of things with continuity, and [the artist] only presumably works with the continuity of things with the bits and pieces.” - Robert Pirsig

An architect knows something about everything. An engineer knows everything about one thing. An architect is a generalist.

Engineers tend to be concerned with physical things themselves. Architects are more directly concerned with the human interface with physical things.

“Architecture is the careful realization of space.”
- Louis Kahn