The Wind in our Sails

One argument put forward against user engagement and regular consultation is – we don’t want to risk a change in direction. It seems the preferred option is to travel hopefully and then deal with any major course corrections at crunch meetings marked on the project manager’s gant chart as points of no return. This is hard to do when the only two choices are – meet the right brief or deliver the wrong project.

The alternative is to make continous small corrections depending on the surrounding conditions – to get to where you want to go in the best way you can. In the yachting world this is called ‘Sail Trimming’ - the art of adjusting your sails to make the best use of the wind in moving your boat forward.

So, when the wind begins to change, we need to react - quickly. If we want to arrive safely in the right harbour then we need to be realistic about how we work with the changing elements rather than against them.

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Upgrade Now

'It is strongly recommended that you upgrade Firefox as soon as possible' is the message that invariably interrupts me sending an important e-mail. I press the 'not now' button and finish what I'm doing. Later I worry: perhaps strongly recommended is code for 'or else suffer catastrophic consequences'.

I am sure that it is inconceivable to the software designers that I do not immediately follow their instructions. Just as it is inconceivable to some architects that the users of their buildings don't take full advantage of their design potential - they refuse to upgrade. But sometimes we are all preoccupied with life's other priorities, or just distrustful.

Upgrades are not a no-brainer. We first of all need to be convinced that we need an upgrade. And we will - when we have the focus, the trust, and the desire. Meanwhile, I strongly recommend that you upgrade Design as soon as possible.

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Design Haiku

A haiku is a Japanese poetic form of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five. It aspires to translate, within a very intense structure, lived moments into life changing insights. Constraints are not always a bad thing.

There is a saying in management consultancy - every challenge is an opportunity, but some opportunities are insurmountable. The world is full of great buildings which were shaped by the need to surmount insurmountable difficulties. Design provides us with a tool not just for overcoming constraints, but for befriending them – using them as catalysts for innovation and creativity.

World class buildings, like world class poems, happen when constraints and imagination effortlessly come together - design haiku for the future.

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A Room with a Kettle

Every building has a threshold – a point at which something starts or ceases to happen. Crossing that threshold is not always easy. Some buildings just seem too difficult to enter: they carry meanings and associations best avoided.

It is an obvious point that to deliver wider educational services we need people to willingly cross the threshold – ideally with hope rather than apprehension in their hearts. Well designed buildings make you want to enter them. They create a place you want to be

At a recent seminar by the Open University I heard someone describe their preferred place to encourage and nurture wider participation in learning as a room with a kettle. That sounds like a safe place. It sounds like a place you would enter.

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Survival of the Fittest

Our new website is live at www.smarterplaces.org. Our objective is simple: to provide those who want to participate in school design with the means to explore, evolve, and communicate their ideas.

There is something profound about releasing ideas onto the internet where Darwinian rules apply. The first measure is survival, and our hope is that the website will find its own important niche in the food chain and grow to become an integral part of the language of school design in Scotland.

To do this, we need to let go of our creation – to allow it to change in response to what the world wants from it. Eventually, we all need to recognise this as an essential part of the design process – allowing our designs to make their own way in the world.

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Enough is Enough

How much is enough? Game Theory would encourage us to think carefully before we assume that each of us pursuing the absolutely best possible solutions will result in the best possible outcomes.

Yet we have been trained by experience to articulate our requirements as if they were negotiating stances rather than expressions of heartfelt need. As a consequence, every solution, no matter its quality, is seen as a compromise with our theoretical ideal world. We expect our Utopian hopes to be dashed and they inevitably are.

Economists talk of a point reached in consumption when further consumption fails to add any value. The technical term for this is Bliss Point – defined as the total satiation of wants. In design, more is not always better. Sometimes, enough is enough.

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Lessons Learnt

St Margaret’s Academy, West Lothian, is over 15 years old, yet avoided many of the mistakes of its predecessors – and stands up well to the passage of time and ideas. One can only imagine the moment when its architect questioned the way things were always done and decided to think again.

There may indeed be only one lesson to learn – that we need to think carefully about why we repeat ourselves. The good reason is to build on experience and not reinvent the wheel: the bad reason is because we didn’t think.

‘If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got’. We know this. We know that we are all guilty of repeating the same mistakes. The lesson for designers is . . . think again.

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