Negotiated Design

This excellent article in the New York times today How the 9/11 Memorial Changed Its Architect, Michael Arad made me think about "design by committee" (or "negotiated design" as Arad calls it) and the role and image of the architect on construction teams or at the community at large.

If the architect is suspected to be an egomaniac, a lot is Ayn Rand's fault who burnt into the public's mind this image of Howard Roark as the heroic architect. In the "Fountainhead" Roark embodies Rand's image of the entrepreneur and creative maker of things and her idea that those leaders know better and need to force their will on the masses. Consequently Howard Roark fights with everybody to maintain his ideas of design and despises compromise. Thankfully Ted Loos who writes about Arad in the Times never mentions the Fountainhead or Howard Roark.

The Rand book, widely read in high schools and by many remembered as a film with Gary Cooper as Roark, has somehow struck a nerve within the public which has long harbored a love-hate relationships with architects.

On the love side, architects seem somewhat glamorous and this led to many movie makers choosing architects as their protagonists (Brady Bunch, Indecent Proposal). On the hate side, architects appear as narcissistic egotists who think of nothing than their own fame who want to build a monument to their own greatness via the client's money.

Some of the celebrity architects fuel the negative image as they use a lot of "archi babble" (the unitelligable insider language of architects which used to be cultivated in the glossy design magazines) to sell their designs as context-sensitive and unique solutions to unique problems while every child can easily recognize the branded design that appears to be recycled from project to project across continents and different uses.

Michael Arad is not such a case. When he won the 9/11 memorial design competition he was unknown and young. And the design of a  memorial is clearly a more artistic undertaking than the design of a building which can be rather understood as "problem solving" through design. Arad, as a designer who deeply cared about his design, got defensive when aspects of the design were challenged. Be it by bureaucrats, be it by celebrity architects or by the sheer cost constraints. However, and that is what the article is about, unlike Roark, he learned to compromise and even see value in it.

The red line on one side is the one where the essence of a design gets lost. On the other end of the spectrum is a line where intransigence prevents learning and the improvement of a design. An architect always has to move between those two lines which are not at all "red" in daily life and which, in fact, might move several times during the long process towards implementation of a project.

It has been my experience that the first cast of a design, no matter how heartfelt, creative, genial and thorough, is almost never the best that can be done. The complexer a problem, the less likely a lone designer can find the all encompassing solution. Architects almost always work as part of a larger team, even when they design something as small as a single family home. There are engineers, there are contractors and most importantly, there are owners, users or funders. Each will contribute essential aspects that even a genius architect might have overlooked.

Thus, design by committee doesn't need to be bad or lead to inferior results. If an architect is the team leader she has a wonderful opportunity to guide the process of obtaining all the facts and data that are needed for a complete design. But even in a subordinate position, the architect can help to install a process that teases out good design. A great approach is to build consensus on the design problem as such (why are we doing this? Surprisingly often one finds solutions in need of a problem) then find consensus on the objectives (what is it that we want to achieve?) and only then focus on a particular set of design solutions. The problem definition and the goals and objectives will be invaluable tools in evaluating possible solutions and finding the best one.

This process seems tedious and seemingly unworthy of the great artist whom we imagine to "create" out of his gut and spirit. But in a society in which acceptance and consensus is a must for almost any change to the existing environment, it is almost always necessary to "design by negotiation". It is this particular aspect, which is a key ingredient to the definition of "Community Architect".