by Michael Joyce, MArch ‘91
Design thinking has often been a mysterious process that I find is a comfortable and yet complex place to inhabit. By nature, design is part of the human condition that defines our progress through the ages and inspires our push to innovate. Looking back at my time at MIT-SAP, and now as a member of MITArchA, I have recently wondered how MIT trained architects are wired in a way that is outside the traditional educational path. Do we see things a little differently from our design colleagues and is the search across transdisciplinary lines perhaps our significant creative process? Or maybe it’s simply just an insatiable curiosity… and one that will not “Kill the cat”.
At MIT, we did not hear the word ‘design’ often. Rather, we often heard meanings such as the process, or the transformation of place or perhaps the issues of continuity and the variations of form. It was as if we were able to peel away the layers of the word Design, its multiple meanings and dig deeper into an essential knowledge of design space. Before my time at MIT these terms were unknown yet eventually appealed to me. Discussing the contours of design at MIT was at times challenging, but always interesting and intellectually rewarding. Above all, it was about seeing the larger realm towards how we inhabit both space and time versus the short fleeting object or glorified moment. In other words, design through the lens of MIT was always “moving”; a pliable medium working continuously in a changing and flexible world. Above all it is always grounded in the built condition, the culture of the site and about bringing focus to habitation and community. These are the domains I hold close to me and that nourish my design process.
Western New York Welcome Center, Buffalo, NY
What informs my own architectural approach, and my design thinking is a sort of balance between the deliberate and the visceral. In the process of making, which I can say is partially informed by early formative years with my father (who was a builder), there is the state of what it wants to become -the Idea coalescent with how it wants to become-the Construct. One is not more primary than the other yet both have a reciprocal interface that fires the engine of architecture. Like John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing”, I find intuitive connections in the act of observation; the structure within nature, beautifully designed assemblies, writing, music, photography and eventually architecture- these are the makings of the design apparatus.
Lisbon Street
In architecture there is a struggle to design within constant challenges from the issues of the site to the program, structural support, life-safety, societal equity, budgets, and climatic responsibility to name just a few. Yet it is within these challenges and finding the associations that one can truly find the opportunity to conceive the vision that inspires.
Architecture and design can be defined by some as a “product”. However, the architectural product within a design state is not an immediate offering but rather an integrated device to its often-changing context, the ephemeral reading of site and especially how we inhabit place and serve humanity. There is a concern when such a product strays from the essential purposes of shelter, community, and a timeless value to serve function and beauty over time. Design is both a constant and a variable.
Design then indeed has the stamp of humanity – where we dare to dream and conjure new inclusive and flexible environments. Its very essence is to be human, to understand how to create the contexts that serve our needs and our desires for an improved world. At MIT, I found a beginning not an end to what design means, where architecture seeks a balance of the deliberate and the visceral.
How do we design? The answer is still being built.
J Michael Ruane Trial Courts, Salem, MA