Future thinking in process.
This is another in my series of posts inspired by 1000 Awesome Things, the Webby Award winning blog written by Neil Pasricha. The series is my meditation on the awesome reasons why I was
and continue to be attracted to the art of architecture.
Architects plan or design places and buildings. They imagine attractive
and functional solutions for each design problem. Architects coordinate multidisciplinary
teams of design, engineering, and construction professionals. They sort through
a maze of building codes and zoning requirements. They add value by monitoring
the budget, by ensuring the proposed design minimizes energy and maintenance
costs, by exploring new thinking on critical issues, and more. This leads to
better outcomes and the best realization of their clients’ visions. They do all
this by applying their knowledge and skills to conceive what is possible for buildings
that may stand for many, many years. In short, architects are visionaries—they
are future-thinkers.
Being a future-thinker means having a mindset geared to examining and testing potential outcomes. Professional futurists chiefly focus on probabilities rather than predictions. They model scenarios, mapping current trends into a set of the likeliest effects. Architects similarly explore ideas and opportunities for a given project through an iterative process, mapping possibilities, and modeling and testing a building’s design before it becomes a concrete reality.
Being a future-thinker also means being creative, inventive, and far-sighted. Architects worth their salt are always thinking about how their work will contribute to a better future for the communities they work in. In a sense, architects are nothing if not time travelers during the design process.
Being a future-thinker means having a mindset geared to examining and testing potential outcomes. Professional futurists chiefly focus on probabilities rather than predictions. They model scenarios, mapping current trends into a set of the likeliest effects. Architects similarly explore ideas and opportunities for a given project through an iterative process, mapping possibilities, and modeling and testing a building’s design before it becomes a concrete reality.
Being a future-thinker also means being creative, inventive, and far-sighted. Architects worth their salt are always thinking about how their work will contribute to a better future for the communities they work in. In a sense, architects are nothing if not time travelers during the design process.
Expo ’67, Montreal (photo by Laurent Bélanger - Own work, CC BY-SA
3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30298079)
The architectural
profession has a storied history replete with futuristic and provocative proposals
intended as advanced harbingers of tomorrow’s world. Equal parts the products
of hubris, optimism, and naivete, these concepts captured the public’s fancy. Many
were impossibly ambitious. Others were meant to presage the widespread use of revolutionary
technologies. The majority never progressed beyond visions on paper, but some did
get built. Periodic world expositions since the 1800s have served as testing
grounds for numerous ideas thought to be ahead of their time. Think of such
iconic and innovative structures as the Crystal Palace in London (1851), the
Eiffel Tower (1889), the Barcelona Pavilion (1929), the Space Needle in Seattle
(1962), and Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome in Montreal (1967). Many
regarded these examples as expressive symbols of a bold and utopian future.
The reality usually
proves different. Many past attempts to earnestly envision an architecture of
the future appear silly or quaint once that future date arrives (think of early
20th century visions of 21st century cities populated by dirigibles
and flying cars). Futurists and architects do their best to imagine what the
future might be like, but they also know they’re not clairvoyant. Accurately
predicting the future is an inexact science at best. Disruptive developments
can occur at any time, perturbing our illusions of balance, order, certainty,
and predictability.
For everyday architects, future thinking is grounded in the very ordinary and matter-of-fact challenges posed by real-world design problems. Architects traditionally approach design as an exercise in the development of positive, linear scenarios even as the world is made up of complex systems, interacting in innumerably non-linear ways. At best, they can visualize each of their projects as part of one possible version of the future, managing a vast field of future probability by viewing it through a lens resolutely set in the present moment. That said, future-minded designers work outside many different, complexly interacting boxes at once. They analyze and understand as much as they can about the design problem but also recognize where the gaps in their ability to predict the future exist. Accordingly, they seek to produce buildings that possess the flexibility to be adaptable over time, embrace contingency, and are resilient in the face of constant and sometimes chaotic change.
Future thinking comes naturally to architects. Architects have the AWESOME responsibility of designing buildings and places that give shape to our future.
Next Architecture is Awesome: #21 Symmetry
King’s Dream of New York (1908)
For everyday architects, future thinking is grounded in the very ordinary and matter-of-fact challenges posed by real-world design problems. Architects traditionally approach design as an exercise in the development of positive, linear scenarios even as the world is made up of complex systems, interacting in innumerably non-linear ways. At best, they can visualize each of their projects as part of one possible version of the future, managing a vast field of future probability by viewing it through a lens resolutely set in the present moment. That said, future-minded designers work outside many different, complexly interacting boxes at once. They analyze and understand as much as they can about the design problem but also recognize where the gaps in their ability to predict the future exist. Accordingly, they seek to produce buildings that possess the flexibility to be adaptable over time, embrace contingency, and are resilient in the face of constant and sometimes chaotic change.
Future thinking comes naturally to architects. Architects have the AWESOME responsibility of designing buildings and places that give shape to our future.
Next Architecture is Awesome: #21 Symmetry
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