The premise of this book is that “good fit” between a form and its context is key to good design.
Austrian-born architect Christopher Alexander says achieving a “frictionless coexistence” between a thing you’re making and what’s around it is the goal for every problem.
This “frictionless coexistence” stuff reminds me of a story someone tried to explain to me in Japan when I was a high school exchange student in the boonies of Tochigi prefecture.
“In Japan,” he tried to tell me gently though neither of us spoke too many words of the other’s language, “people have to get along, right? Because there are a lot of us in a small amount of space? So, it’s like this… you have all these people all next to each other, like this, and you want everyone to go smoothly around each other. Like this. Round and not square, see? And the idea? The idea is that no one disturbs anyone else, because we’re all moving easily without smashing anything up.”
I picked up Notes because Design Kompany is researching for a new project about fit, actually. Studying up on new topics is a big part of how we approach a new design, so we find and read a specific book for each new project.
For this one, we have to piece together a lot of different bits of information in an elegant, logical, yet eye-pleasing way. There’s even two languages. And the full package set needs to be easy to “get,” and be beautiful, too.
Where to start?
So this is where we open the first page of Notes. It says:
Every design problem begins with an effort to achieve fitness betweeen two entities: the form in question and its context. The form is the simple solution to the problem, the context defines the problem.
In other words, when we speak of design, the real objective of discussion is not the form alone, but the ensemble comprising the form and its context.–Christopher Alexander, Notes on Synthesis and Form
I have this nagging suspicion that most designers don’t really do a lot of thinking about the context. A problem that’s not new, it seems:
Today (1968) functional problems are becoming less simple all the time. But designers rarely confess their inability to solve them. Instead, when a designer does not understand a problem clearly enough to find the order it really calls for, he falls back on some arbitrarily chosen formal order. The problem, because of its complexity, remains unsolved. –Ibid
I wonder what you all think? Do you agree with Alexander that designers can get too lazy to think about how to solve a problem really elegantly? Or do they do a good job understanding the parameters of a project before tackling a new design?
Opinions welcome.
Yesterday I was telling a friend about one of the rooms in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: “Squares That Look Round.” This was meant in the British way, of course; the squares were animate, and their faces swiveled around to see whoever walked through the door.
This seems to be part of artistic balance. You have to be a little self-absorbed (i.e., introspective) to make something original. But it needs a universal theme to create impact. So this requires connection with the rest of the world … a looking ’round, I s’pose. In a designer’s case, this probably means connection with the client AND her customers.
I think what you’re talking about is much more than creating something that looks cool, retro, trendy, whatever. It’s the relationship, and the ideas that evolve organically from that relationship. Challenging, unpredictable, but also not boring.
I like the concept of frictionless coexistence, but I’m not sure that’s possible. Maybe, um, somewhat manageable coexistence! Angles and weird corners and sharp points … the facts of life.
Argh. Now I have that song in my head.
Squares with rounded corners, maybe?
Yes! Perfect!
“A “frictionless coexistence” between a thing you’re making and what’s around it is the goal for every problem.” The statement is a really powerful statement and it really stood out in the post. This can be applied to life to decorating. For example, you are decorating your living room with the colors brown, black, and orange. You decide to put a pink lamp in the center of the room. I don’t think the pink lamp will go smoothly around the brown, black, and orange.