Iterative Architecture

The problem of designing for the everyday person or the everyday life is that it essentially ends up being a quest to design life itself. When planning a space, architects seem to ask themselves: what exactly will happen here, and how exactly can I build a frame for those activities? But no matter how seemingly well that question is answered, design intention is often more successfully carried out when that intention is to allow interpretation and the project has some room to breathe. The unintended flood of skateboarders outside Richard Meier’s Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art illustrates one of the ways that built things tend to take on lives of their own. In the sharply focused lens with which architects often view their own designs, it is sometimes difficult to anticipate the natural behaviors that will come about as a result. If a designer is too adherent to the specificity of a detail, he or she will likely end up disappointed in the outcome.

For this reason, architecture should shift to a far more iterative process, altering aspects of a project before, during, and after the design has been completed and built. The natural tendencies and feedback which transform a completed structure should in turn lead to architectural alterations which enhance these behaviors and allow it to better serve those who are using it. The theoretical principles behind architecture are contradictory in that a project often wants to be around for hundreds of years yet serve contemporary life which is in constant flux. Perhaps a “flexible” design doesn’t mean leaving a space literally open to interpretation, but understanding that physical changes could and probably should be made to a building over time as needed. Maybe architects should be more willing to form lasting and evolving relationships with their buildings instead of treating a problem once and sending it on its way.