Don’t get fixed on the design

This is something that happens a lot.

This is how it goes:

1. I analyse the clients brief, site topography and other constraints

2. I produce a design

3. The client loves it

4. Occasionally the planners really don’t like it

5. The client gets angry at the planners and don’t want to change the design.

Generally the redesign will be better that what you loved originally; trust me – you’ll love the redesign more than the ‘best design ever’ that we started with.

remember that design is a cyclical process; a process of fine-tuning and improving, a process of polishing and polishing and polishing. And sometimes you have to throw away a design in order to move forwards with something better.

This is what the architect is trained to do. To design and then redesign and then to tune and then to retune, to polish and then to polish some more…

Look at the following sequence of movies on how the design for this Passivhaus changed over time and how the end result (bottom movie) is a million times better than what we started with:

So that’s why you shouldn’t get too fixed on the design; it may have to change and who knows it will probably get better and you’ll love the redesign even more!