Information Overload

All of these theories and suggestions that we are reading about and discussing leaves me wondering how to move forward.  I find myself having a hard time working on my studio project.  I keep looking at it and wondering:

Am I creating junkspace?

Is this critical architecture?

Is this projective architecture?

Am I relying too much on diagrams?

Why would I design a building based on context anyway?

Am I designing flexibly for the future?

Am I sufficiently involving building users in the design process?

What if I don’t get this right?

Would this building be better if it wasn’t being designed by an architect?

Would every building be better if it wasn’t designed by an architect?

Why am I in school to be an architect?

What I am doing with my life?

There are so many interesting thoughts on the practice of architecture that we are coming across.  It’s like my mind is being flooded by too many contradictory thoughts.  I have a hard time processing all of this information while simultaneously designing a project.  I think what is important is to not simply adopt the ideology of another person, but to begin to construct a personal ethos made up of bits and pieces of the theories and ideas of others – in other words, to develop a premise.

Fear of failure is paralyzing.  But we must inevitably fail in order to learn and become better.  We can be crushingly critical as architects many times.  What are we accomplishing with that strategy?  It makes me hesitant to design because if I don’t get it right, someone is going to tear my work apart either to my face or behind my back.  We should look at architecture, whether designed by a classmate, a famous architect, a contractor, or a civilian with the purpose of seeing what works and what doesn’t so that we can build on that and create better buildings in the future. 

One of my all-time favorite quotes is by Theodore Roosevelt, and sums up these thoughts very eloquently:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”