Architecture
Process: a way of working
We’ve talked elsewhere about how the making of things becomes an art itself. The process is almost its own project. While jobs may come and go, an idea that is kicked up, like a fine dust, never quite goes away.
The process is a way of exploring ideas, and examples abound of artists who fixate on one idea, not out of tenacity, boredom, or resignation, but because of focus. The idea helps define them as an artist, and gives direction to what they do.
Times change, and the way we get ideas ‘out’ does too, but the idea of recording ideas in order to react to and interact with them is timeless. At all scales, from ceramics to cities, from the cave of Lascaux, da Vinci’s notebooks, and Beethoven’s sketchbooks, to today’s CNC and rapid prototyping, exploring the idea is key, and helps make the finished product better.
In short, the design process has its own special life which deserves respect.