The ‘Central Idea’: Hang On To It Like Grim Death!
Good designs often seem to have only a few major dominating ideas which structure the scheme and around which other relatively minor considerations are organized. Sometimes they can even be reduced to one idea known to designers by many names but most often called the ‘concept’ or the ‘parti’. Such ‘central ideas’ inevitably emerge from early design explorations into the project.
In architectural design in general, these dominating ‘central ideas’ usually can be visualized almost immediately in terms of one or more kinds of architectural form(s) or architectural space(s). The ‘central idea’ for a healthcare (especially hospital) project may, however, be of a more complex nature, not so easy to grasp and not so easily visualized in architectural form or space. The ‘concept’, for a hospital building may involve elements of its proposed manner of financing, it may involve a separate ‘central idea’ about a building services framework which the designer, so to speak, can hang his hat on, and, in addition to the usual social and formal concerns will definitely involve an idea of the evolution and change of the building through a long time span.
In HOSMAC, we approach our projects ‘holistically’. We insist on our clients formulating a ‘statement of intent’ for the project. This forms a reference point for professionals of various disciplines working on the project to make decisions consistent with the project goal. Thus we see that this ‘central idea’ need not restrict itself to the process of architectural design. A.N. Whitehead in his presidential address to the Mathematical Association puts it rather succinctly:
“The art of reasoning consists in getting hold of the subject at the right end, of seizing the few general ideas that illuminate the whole, and of persistently organizing all subsidiary facts around them. Nobody can be a good reasoner unless by constant practice he has realized the importance of getting hold of the big ideas and hanging on to them like grim death.”
Time and again, however, I have been involved in projects where the client has a clouded vision of what it is he or she wishes to achieve, and this fogginess communicates itself to all those who are involved in the project, there is no ‘central idea’, there is no clarity of vision. And of all the various professionals involved I think it is the designers who feel the most frustrated by the aimlessness of the exercise.
Designers need to feel purpose.
The architect Richard MacCormac of the firm MacCormac, Jamieson & Prichard, referring to the ‘big idea’ keeping designers going through what he recognizes as a very fraught process, says:
“This is not a sensible way of earning a living, it’s completely insane, there has to be this big thing that you’re confident you’re going to find, you don’t know what it is you’re looking for and you hang on.”
Somebody at the top has to communicate to the whole team that yes, there is a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. This sense of purpose is what sustains the team, the quality of the idea is the sustenance that nourishes and keeps the team going towards this distant light, sometimes maybe hazy but definitely beautiful.
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