If you've designed anything in your life, whether it's architecture, graphics, interiors
- whatever - you know this feeling.
Where you've invested all of your creative efforts into your project and as it's wrapping
up and you're sort of puttering about, grasping at all the small details and final tasks - what's
left to be done - not wanting to officially finish it because it means you'll have to
get started on that next project which is waiting, or looming, in the background.
It's this strange mix of excitement and dread; the most gratifying and terrifying point in
the timeline of design.
It's at times like these where doubt starts to creep in and you start wondering you know,
can I do this all over again?
What if that was the last good idea I'll ever have?
Do I still even have what it takes?
Will it be good?
And…and, then if it is good, will it be better than the last project?
If you’ve felt this way in the past or if you're feeling it right now you're not alone
I right there with you as I'm getting ready to begin a new project.
So, in this video I thought I'd talk about how I deal with this and how I find new ideas.
There's a term coined by Arthur Koestler in his book, The Act of Creation known as by
bisociation.
Now he has a very wordy definition of it, but simply put bisociation is the linking
of two completely separate, unrelated ideas.
Simple, right?
So, how does it work in practice?
Well, the design for the Sears Tower in Chicago by Bruce Graham and Fazlur Khan of Skidmore
Owings and Merrill is a perfect example.
So, there's a story that the two partners were having lunch together at the Chicago
Club; they were mulling over design concepts for an office tower and they were discussing
the need for a novel approach for what was to be the tallest building in the world.
Structurally, they agreed that a series of tubes with shared walls was an extremely efficient
way to support a very tall building, but that approach would also yield a rather bulky mass
as compared with the simple steel frames in common use at the time.
Now, it's said that Graham paused and looked down at the table at his pack of cigarettes
and he grabbed a small bundle of them in his fist and he proceeded to push and pull them
to different heights.
In this moment, he realized that if each tube were staggered vertically both their slenderness
and their structural integrity would be preserved.
So, linking the idea for a skyscraper with a pack of cigarettes - two seemingly unrelated
things - provided this novel concept for the Sears Tower.
Now, bisociation requires unconventional thinking.
Commonly held beliefs and repetitive thought processes will always yield similar results:
permutations rather than mutations, variations on a theme rather than some hyper-flexible
thought that permits going beyond the expected solutions.
Learning to bisociate challenges the way we're taught to process the world though.
Accepting conventions and limitations like the maximum height of a building leads to
solutions that incrementally advance previous successes: a more efficient structural steel
frame rather than the tube concept in the previous example.
Bisociation destructs previously held limitations while creating and establishing new ones.
Now, before Koestler there was Graham Wallas and his recipe for creativity which I especially
like and rely on.
In his book, The Art of Thought, he outlines four stages of creativity: preparation, incubation,
illumination, and verification.
The interplay of these stages, between conscious and unconscious thought - he contends - and,
I believe this too, is the process that allows us to produce creative work.
So here's the process he describes.
Preparation: this stage lays the groundwork, the foundation for the thinking to follow.
It collates the questions, seeks to understand the context, and to develop an understanding
of the problem in order to focus the efforts of the next three stages.
In architecture, this would be like conducting precedent research, understanding the conditions
of development, the zoning, code regulations, and site analysis.
Now, incubation.
This stage happens in the unconscious.
The previous stage, preparation, has filled the mind with all this information to process
and the incubation period sets the unconscious mind to work on it.
Discovering and forging connections is central to the success of the incubation period and
Wallas actually suggests that working on multiple problems at once actually increases the odds
that the incubation period will be fruitful.
This forces the mind away from developing a singular solution into a place where it's
unconsciously investigating several briefs at once.
Now, I personally find the incubation period maddening because I'm nervously awaiting the
arrival of the next stage which is illumination.
This is the source of the most anxiety in my creative life.
Now, illumination follows an undefined period of incubation.
It's that beam of light shining down from the clouds upon the patch of earth you've
never seen before.
Quite often, I feel like I'm approaching illumination only to be pushed back.
But, when ideas begin to reveal themselves I know that illumination is near.
Usually these thoughts, or as Wallace calls them, trains of association - precede another
round of ideas that press a little further forward and eventually to the solution.
And, lastly there's verification where we test and fine-tune the idea.
For some, this is an easier process than others.
The unconscious processes that deliver the illuminated concept to the conscious-self
haven't done all of the calculations necessary to prove the idea is valid or even good.
For me, illumination doesn't drop a fully formed idea on my desk.
I have to work at it building layer upon layer of trace, testing and sketching and applying
physical effort.
By contrast, Maya Lin, the architect of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, likens
her process to that of laying an egg.
The essence of her incubated ideas combine into a singular package that needs very little
care or guidance to express her original intent.
Without limits or hard edges how can we even judge the success of one architectural solution
over another?
Constraints are necessary for our work to exist whether they're economic, developmental,
legal, formal, material, client-driven or user-driven or technological.
And, when I'm talking about constraints they're more than just: a need for a home, or a need
for a school.
The questions you need to ask are deeper than that.
Constraints are opportunities for us to innovate and boundaries to push against.
How might you cleverly subvert a constraint like an area or a volume restriction, or a
stylistic roof slope restriction?
What if you could only use technology to solve your problem, what would that look like?
What if I were building this remotely and could use only one material and it had to
be brought in by helicopter?
So, you know what they say about goldfish, right?
They grow to the size of the tank that they're in.
Well, the same is true for your design work.
Set aside eight hours to complete a series of design concepts and magically you'll take
a work day to complete the task.
When I'm stuck and looking for inspiration, I like to cut the time I've allotted in half.
If you've dedicated eight working hours to create three concepts, now you only have four.
What are you going to have to do differently to accomplish your goal in half the time?
Ideas are everywhere, but we need to condition ourselves to receive them.
Pay attention to the things that you've missed because you've been so busy, focused with
your head down on the page in front of you.
Zoom out; look at things from a new perspective.
I'll always remember the first day of my high school physics class, our teacher lit a candle
and placed it on the lab bench and challenged us to write down everything we could about
the candle, every physical observation we could think of.
So, color, shape, height, flame, wick, dripping wax, all the obvious descriptors.
I ran out of ideas in probably less than a minute along with most of my classmates.
So, after doing this we then each read aloud our observations and realized that we had
recorded the same dozen or so of the most obvious features.
“That's it?”
the teacher says.
Then, he simply leaned in and puffed on the flame and of course the flame moves and wisps
of black smoke rise from it and he says, “Anybody have that observation on their list?” and
from there he proceeded to come up with another two dozen or so descriptors, each of which
was plainly visible, but all of us had missed them because we weren't trained to observe.
Profound architecture interprets the world for us.
How can observing what's already there make for a better building?
Okay, have you ever done this trick where you switch hands while you're brushing your
teeth?
Try it the next time you're brushing, just switch hands see how difficult such a simple
task is when you completely flip how you're used to doing it you actually have to think
about it.
Now, with this trick you do what everyone else isn't.
Design the anti-project.
Can public be private, up be down, stage be audience, open be closed, expensive swapped
for inexpensive, heavy for light?
And, this is a game you can play on so many different levels including eliminating all
the constraints we spoke about earlier.
What would the project look like if I didn't have to abide by X or Y?
Or, take three of your precedent study solutions and completely invert them.
Often the best solution is the simplest, the one that involves the fewest moves, the one
that's most pure, and the least convoluted.
What solution would require no tools to construct?
How about the one that children could build?
What's the free solution?
What if you were financing it, would you do it differently?
Keep removing variables: a library without books, a theater without screens.
What's the one thing that if removed would render everything else pointless?
Now there is truly nothing new in this world, understanding this should free you to look
to the solutions others have developed before you: nature, abstraction, art, photography,
movies, light, people, material, Instagram, Pinterest, books, the site, maps, colors,
wind, ocean, tools, movement, emotion, weather, smell, shape, other professionals, other disciplines.
Now, although it's been done before, it's never been done by you and that is one of
the most liberating ideas when it comes to setting off on a new project.
So, where will all this lead?
Well, I don't know and that's the fun part I suppose.
Make sure you're subscribed and that you've hit the notification bell so you're notified
whenever I upload new videos and you can follow along as I figure out this next design challenge.
Be sure to tell me in the comments the tricks you have for transitioning between one project
and another.
We'll see you again next time.
Cheers!