Why and Why Not
I feel like Bjarke is really good at explaining the "why" in using effective diagrams, but it seems that he lacks the technical know how since it has been revealed that a lot of his projects are in bad shape after a few years of being completed (have not confirmed this myself, just on the account of other people's description)
I guess what I am trying to question is often times when the designer can not start his or her projects with "Why", wouldn't it be good to at least know the "how" and produce something of quality that can last for a little while longer?
On the other hand, I feel like designer like MVRDV often starts their project with "Why" and end up answering the design exercise in "Why Not" or even so to a point of "just because___ Why Not".
Browsing through their projects, I can't help but asking questions like "Why put a giant stair to the top of an old building?" "Why the house is blue or green?" "Why there is a hole in the middle of a building? ... the questions can go on. I am sure that they have their reasons for doing all those, but at the same time it seems that all these questions can just be simply answered with
"WHY NOT?"
Why not cover an old building with a giant scaffold stair?
Why not paint the house blue or red?
Why not put a hole in a building?
Personally, I quite like some of their projects, they have a child like creativity in them, but on the other hand, I think they show contempt in not trying to explaining themselves which is common among designers, myself included. It's because
To design, one tends to start with intuition rather than____
I am not necessarily criticizing anything or anyone, all I have heard and learned thus far in the realm of design has given me more questions than answers comparing prior getting into this field.
That's all.
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ReplyDeleteGreat post Zach! there does seem to by naivety or childishness is the act of creating or building under the premise "why not" because it obviously implies there is no why. If there is no why, then you should probably stop directing the use of 100's of millions of dollars right? If buildings have a human, environmental, social, financial or other impact and there is no why... you probably just should not perform the act of constructing your idea.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a big fan of Bjarke Ingels but I watched the episode they did on him in the Netflix series Abstract: The Art of Design which sheds light on why his buildings are falling apart. The reason he got the commissions was because he sold himself as the person who could do the project for less. His main projects and his first projects were centered around housing and therefore meant greater margins for the developers as well as potentially more affordability for the renters. This is a fine line to tread when in consideration of housing but makes me sympathize with his initial participation a little more. This premise of "why not" however, seems to resonate with quite a bit of his newer work, flashy, meaningless additions to projects that just say " because we can".