Just wrapped up a major project deadline today so have some time to jot down some thoughts of the weekend competition before I forget some of the details. Here's a link if you want to see our winning competition entry: The Icon. There have been lots of workshops on refining the design process within the firm, but theories can only take you so far, we'd still need to test things out on an actual project. Shravan and I visited the Graham Foundation for their annual book sale on a Saturday, and after that we chatted a bunch on the issues of current design process/design directions/manifestos, which ultimately led to the talk of participating in the weekend competition. And for our intent to fully realized, we'd need to recruit Wyatt so we can both test things out across all levels (Senior PA - Designer II - Intern) and at the same time, the result can effectively traverse through the levels as well. We spent some time simply chatting and aligning the goals about a week before the competition. It really helped us all to be on the same page. Here are couple key items that we discussed:
Right after they announced the competition brief, instead of immediately start drawing, we decided to go grab dinner and just chat through it the whole time. We then have a long tracing paper just for everyone to shoot their ideas and get all the possibilities out there. After an hour and half, we then started to categorize all the ideas and slowly eliminate the ones that didn't fit with our core concept. Some ideas got eliminated not because they were bad, but because they wouldn't necessary give us advantage in the competition, we were making decisions based on a very logical and strategic manner. After another hour of discussion, we then funneled it all down to a more straight forward direction, but not too commit to a point of no return since we'd like to sleep on it and revisit it the next morning. In the morning, everyone brought some inspirational books and exchange thoughts and expectations again before designing. All these conversations turned out to be super critical in terms of helping us make decision quick and consistent. Here is the precise timeline of our competition process: Saturday
We spent as little time as possible on the actual massing design, we were able to achieve this all because of the preliminary conversations, for us, coming up with a perfect form was not the objective of this competition, it's the idea behind it and the representation that matter in the end. Sunday
Out of the total working 25 hours across three days, we only spent 7 hours on the design, the rest 72% of the time was dedicated to graphics and representation, which breaks the stigma of "you always design until the last minute" in architectural competition. It also challenges the preconception of "designing should take more time than production". One critic I have for most of the real-world competition pursuits is that we never have adequate time to push for final production, lots of good ideas were not reflected on the graphical representation in the end. Balancing the design time and the production time is a reoccurring challenge.
Two methods we found extremely successful were to switch up tasks and frequent check-in among teammates. Whenever someone hit a roadblock, we'd immediately discuss or switch up the task for maximum efficiency. It was really helpful at the beginning for the initial massing, we collectively agreed on a sketch and then Shravan started to loft off some volumes in Rhino and then passed it on to both Wyatt and I to test it out, and then give it back to Shravan to complete the final form. Another example would be when I was stuck on photoshopping a rendering, I'd switch with Shravan to have a different perspective and fresher take. This way, everyone has equal ownership to the design and investing the same amount of energy into the project. Overall, the competition was a success in terms of testing out the design progress with three different levels across the firm (Senior PA - Designer II - Intern). Everyone contributed the same amount and equally important. We will see how we can slowly implement some of the strategies into real world applications.
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AboutThis blog was launched in August, 2015 during my 8th year of studying abroad in Barcelona, Spain. I decided to start this blog and record some of my thoughts and moments. This blog is also dedicate to Richard Fu, a good friend of mine who is now guarding me from above. He inspired me to get out of the comfort zone and be curious about the world. Amig@'s blogs
Check out my brother Will's blog (in Mandarin) to see what he's up to these days (Design, fashion, food, technology, music, film...etc) Check out Kris' website for some high quality photos around the world Archives
September 2023
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