Interpretation – its role in architectural designing

Interpretation: its role in architectural designing

Gabriela Goldschmidt

Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion, Haifa, Israel

Through studies of processes of architectural designing, a sub-process of interpretation emerges as the single most important force in the shaping of design solutions. An interpretation is formed when design moves, which are enacted on knowledge pertaining to the task, transform its pieces into a stable structure by achieving a unique relationship among them. A look at first-year students' design efforts demonstrates how, through construing the task, interpretations are or are not generated. The potential for creating global interpretations is likely to be found mostly at the starting point, which reflects the designer's state of mind at the outset of the design endeavour. Different ways in which experimentation is carried out are analysed, notably play and discovery, without which it is hard to imagine a process of composition of pieces of knowledge. Play and discovery are shown to induce new interpretations and to help substantiate old ones. The contribution of long chains of moves and the timely generation and evaluation of design criteria and constraints is pointed out. These different cognitive aspects reveal how central an activity

interpreting is throughout the entire process of architectural designing.

Keywords: interpretation, architectural design, design process

'Design processes' can mean different things to different observers. It has been modelled in a variety of ways over the last few decades by different researchers. A brief overview of a model I subscribe to will provide the contextual framework within which I wish to study interpretation. My model describes the process in terms of four entities: definition, or design imperatives; personalized program, or interpretation; independent inputs, or design modifiers; physical form. 1

The definition has to do with the collection, recording and arrangement of all relevant data, or knowledge, concerning the task. An interpretation transforms the definition into workable relationships among different pieces of the givens, through structuring and by intro- ducing the designer's own input. When such input is completely extraneous to the definition and its role is one of a catalyst in the creation of an interpretation, a design

modifier becomes part of the interpretation. Physical form in various modes is present as representation of information, a means of experimentation and inquiry, and a test-tool for the confirmation or the rejection of hypotheses (described as 'appearance' by John Habraken2). In other words, it expresses and manipu- lates both problems and solutions.

Interpretation is the hinge on which the entire process is pivoted. In order to support this claim, I propose to look at different aspects of the process of designing and point out how they are related to interpretation. Seen in this light, interpretation in designing can itself be described as a process: the central process within a wider activity of designing.

We need to assert the meaning of two terms. First, knowledge: I use 'knowledge' here for all information and data, all norms, belief-systems, requirements, wishes and

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stylistic preferences a designer is aware of at any time during the process of designing. Since the picture changes while work is in progress, the body of knowledge alters, too. Second, design move: to make a design move means to act on knowledge. This may entail adding or subtracting from the selective body of knowledge in use, or changing the relationship among various items in- cluded in it. Priorities, for example, are often transposed during the process of designing. Any one design move may bring about other moves in a chain reaction. Interrelated moves are clustered in what I call chains of moves. A design education is partially aimed at training students to acquire the necessary competence and skill which are required for the production of long chains of moves.

STABLE STRUCTURES AND THE COMBINATION LOCK METAPHOR

The process of interpretation is essentially an attempt to select, transform and compose pieces of knowledge so as to create a stable structure in which conflicts have been largely removed or resolved. A stable structure acquires a meaning beyond the additive sum of that of its parts. The value of stability lies in the ability to regulate the behaviour of the structure, although the regulation rules usually remain at least partially tacit. Once stable, the structure becomes specific or 'closed' (though its parts maintain a high degree of lower-level freedom).

The act of selecting and composing pieces of information resembles the use of a combination lock. When one succeeds in combining (composing) a set of numerals in a specific way (structure), the lock opens. Likewise, a designer endeavours to arrive, through the making of design moves, at a combination of pieces of knowledge with a 'good fit' relationship among them. 3 When such a combination is achieved a stable structure (interpretation) is created which 'closes' in the same way the combination lock opens. For both the lock and the interpretation, the key concept is that a particular relationship among elements (often hierarchical) provides a solution to a problem. The enormous quantity and complexity of pieces of knowledge in a design situation explain the fact that so many interpretations are simultaneously possible: like a multi-dimensional combination lock, if one existed. It should be stressed, however, that unlike the combination for a lock, in an interpretation, which is a continuing process, there is never a totally 'final' combination. It can grow, be transformed, become part of a wider, more global construct. The structure that generates it aspires to achieve maximum stability: the equilibrium of its parts seeks to rest on an ever wider supportive basis.

I hope to clarify these rather abstract notions through a look at some case studies. Assuming that the process of designing is inherent, 4 it is possible to observe interpretative processes in the work of designers of all ranks, not necessarily only in designs by mature, experienced architects. My examples are taken from work by three

ftrst-year architecture students, who went through complete yet brief processes, which lend themselves to scrutiny with relative ease.

THE CUBE EXERCISE

The two-week design exercise the students were presented with called for the fitting of a dwelling unit for a pair of students into a 5m × 5m × 5m cubic volume. The cube could be freely manipulated; pieces could be subtracted and added, but a cube 'idea' was to remain. After the designs were submitted (in form of three- dimensional models) the students wrote accounts of the processes they were involved in. Three of the works and the matching accounts are the basis for our analysis (three other icube exercises executed in the same class were analysed by Eduardo Naisberg as part of his Master's thesis, under the guidance of the authorS). I shall describe the three diverse design trajectories so as to be able to suPport my inferences regarding the role of interpretation in their development (I used a comparison between two :of the following cases, those of Ethel and Gordon, to illustrate a discussion on extraneous inputs in reference 6).

Ethel

Ethel was the youngest and least experienced student in our sample. Always silent in class group-discussions, she seemed quite overwhelmed by her first exposure to design issues.

The first part of Ethel's design process is characterized by an oscillation between a wish to manipulate the cube so as to reach an 'exciting' volumetric composition (Figure lc) and a need to be responsible about satisfying the needs of her two tenants in the dwelling unit she had to produce. Her three-dimensional compositional expectations remained vague and she could never explicitly determine what it was that she was after: she wanted excitement but could not quite figure out what exactly would be considered exciting and why. She stated: 'Everyone wishes to exceed the usual and be exceptional and o r i g i n a l . . . ' and believed at that point, that ' . . . in any shape we choose we can find the appropriate architectural "solution" for the structure we have created'. Catering to the dwellers' needs, on the other hands, was not all dubious. A typical, ordinary apart- ment layout was a model she knew well enough and used without any second thoughts.

When she felt that she could not satisfy her compositional aspirations she built a case for abandoning them (volume bigger than allowed, wasted corners) and managed to find merit in staying with the unaltered cube (Figure la,b): 'I had no choice but to remain with the simple and original structure of the cube . . . excess of originality makes it impossible to see the simple structure, which the eye grasps in an easier, less complicated way. Undoubtedly the number of alternatives here is very g r e a t . . . ' . She decided to 'stay with the original and

236 DESIGN STUDIES

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simple cube and the house's levels will be seen only in the play of spaces inside'. She then concentrated on plans. The concepts behind the plans she attempted were never challenged and as it were, working out and drawing up any kind of plans proved to be an assignment difficult enough to require all of Ethel's time and attention (Figure ld-g): 'Actually an ideal solution does not exist; all we can do is to reduce the number of p r o b l e m s . . . ' . Her earlier confidence in being able to find an 'appropriate architectural solution' for any 'shape we choose' proved to be somewhat premature.

Ethel had no drafting experience of any kind and the conceptualization of three-dimensional spaces in two- dimensional form was not easy for her even when she limited her efforts to the production of plans for two floors of a cubic house. She did not use the technique of layering traces which was demonstrated in class several times; we can conclude that much from the vertical discontinuity of stairs in her drawings, for instance (Figure lf, g). In fact, she did not use tracing paper at all, presumably because she could not see any advantage in doing so. Comments made in class regarding massing and composition (the even distribution of windows on the four walls of her model) had no effect on her and she seemed both unable and unwilling to make an effort to comprehend them. She was pleased with what she did and what struck others as 'problematic' was to her a reasonable consequence, or compromise, resulting from having to deal with constraints. She made one design move at a time, never doubted her decisions and realized she was having difficulties with the medium (drawing, models) only when inconsistencies were pointed out to her.

Debby

Debby studied structural engineering for one year prior to enrolling in architecture. She knew the drafting conventions, but had never tried to use them for design purposes. Like most other students in the class, she had never made a model before.

Debby was emotionally involved in her work from the very beginning. She started by adding 'fun' to the list of requirements, although she could not articulate what precisely she meant by that: 'I walked home with "fun" echoing in my ears, but not succeeding in interlocking'. The formulation of the exercise handout suggested to her the decomposition of the cube, and she immediately chose a strategy for doing so: subdividing the cube into eight smaller cubes, then recomposing them in a new way, while responding to all requirements. She used Lego pieces to build eight small cubes and embarked on a long attempt to combine them (Figure 2c). In this purely sculptural-compositional effort it occurred to her at one point that the cubes represent very small spaces, 2.5m x 2.5m x 2.5m each. She judged these dimensions too small for components of a dwelling unit and decided to merge pairs of cubes into 5m x 2.5m x 2.5m prisms, of which she now had four. Endless time was spent 'playing', as she termed it, with her prisms, which she

treated much like she did the cubes before (Figure 2d) The only criterion she used to evaluate her designs was

how pleasing she found the forms to be. That made it impossible to reach any conclusions: 'I couldn't single out any of the combinations as best or as possessing a more thrilling, attractive form'. 'Playing' continued with growing frustration and no progress until, under the pressure of a deadline, she drew up some of the combinations she had generated and graded them. The emphasis in grading was on form, 'but I tried to also incorporate some assessment of the functional possibilities'. The added constraint eliminated several composi- tions and 'this is how the form was selected'.

She stayed with that selection until the end of the process, despite hesitations and uncertainties (Figure 2a,b,e). Feeling that her choice was a compromise which she was neither in peace with nor loved, Debby backtracked and started afresh. There is no documenta- tion of those new attempts (all of Debby's drawings are reconstructions she made while writing the account), but she tells us she found fault with them because she thought they resembled too much what other students had presented in class. Her harsh self-criticism pushed her back to the previous selection despite considerable emotional involvement with the new designs: 'I already fell in love, somewhat, and even got excited'.

Accepting her compromise, Debby decided to 'make do with what there is and get the most out of it'. At that point a new phase in the design process started, in which she endeavoured to fit plans into the selected form, much like Ethel did with the given form. She chose to start with the stairs because she recognized they represented potential difficulties. While trying out different con- figurations, she made an important discovery: 'Suddenly it occurred to me to give the stairs an importance beyond that of transition from the lower level to the upper level'. Satisfied with her discovery, she experimented with different shapes of stairs and chose one which gave her, in addition to the expected results, some advantages she did not foresee, but which she became aware of while testing the possibilities: '[this configuration] also enabled me to play with the tall space which was created by adding a light-strip along its entire height'.

The rest of the plan followed without major design- events. The introduction of spatial hierarchy through her personal preferences provided Debby with a local, yet powerful interpretation, enabling everything that followed to fall into place with relative ease.

Gordon

A son of an architect, Gordon was a skilled model-builder (besides helping his father, he had worked in a model- shop of a large architectural firm). His drafting skills were minimal and according to his own testimony (months after the exercise we are investigating) he used to approach paper only when an idea was complete and ripe in his head.

Like Debby, he started by decomposing the cube into smaller cubes, but unlike her, he immediately looked for

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a recomposition rule for the putting together of the smaller cubes. He too equipped himself with the small model cubes to aid his search. His account of the design process starts as follows: 'I wanted to make a form which has its origin in the cube (as required by the exercise), but which would break the cube's static state and create some sort of movement - a spiral. I reached the general idea by playing with match boxes . . .'. Match boxes, however, are imperfect cubes and Gordon used sketches to assert the geometric properties of his spiral (Figure 3c,d,e). All sketches were made in a single spell, and by the time he was done, Gordon knew he had found what he had been looking for.

Committed to his emerging design, he proceeded to 'work it out'. The sketches prove that he had a clear idea of the layout from the very beginning: unlike Ethel and Debby, 'form' and 'function' were not separate things in his mind and he had no trouble thinking of them simultaneously. The next phase for him was therefore not one of 'fitting plans' to the form, but 'designing the interior'. He never returned to paper and pencil: 'I did all the rest of the work on interior design with a model, to facilitate spatial conception' (Figure 3a,b). He decided on two principal guidelines, or design criteria. First, 'not to close the cubes with partition walls in order not to lose the [visual] contact among the three spaces nor the effect of the spiral movement'. Second, 'to assign to the intermediate level the common facilities for the two students and to the extreme levels their private spaces'. These principles led to a host of design decisions concerning the location of stairs and the main entrance, heights of volumes and configuration of roofs. All were determined following experiments with several alternatives. A serious conflict was disclosed when it became apparent that a common bathroom, if placed on the intermediate level according to the second guideline, would violate the visual continuity imperative pro- claimed by the first guideline. Gordon gave priority to his first principle and compromised on the second: 'I worked hard in attempt to locate the bathroom on the intermediate level (as part of the second principle), but this would have caused partitioning and would therefore have violated the first principle too severely. Consequently, each student has his own private bathroom, although this was not the original intent'. By establishing priorities Gordon introduced hierarchy into his design-frame, thus structuring it.

Gordon's performance differs from that of Ethel and Debby primarily in the length of chains of design moves he was able to make. Particularly significant were the moves which related evaluations to design criteria. He was able to generate and implement them in a sophisti- cated manner, by which I mean that his commitment to them was unequivocal, yet flexible: had he been able to resolve the bathroom problem on the intermediate level with only a minor breach of a higher ranking rule, he would have most likely done so.

STARTING POINT: GLOBAL INTERPRETATIONS

The verbal and written description of the task as given to the students called for maintaining a 'cube idea'. The cube, it was explained, could be added to or subtracted from. What did a 'cube idea' mean to our designers:? They obviously came to think of it in different ways, as the results demonstrate. How can we understand their varying interpretations of what the task meant? How did they subordinate the option of 'undoing' the cube to their global interpretations of the task?

To answer these questions we need to look at what each of them did at the very beginning. The option of taking the cube apart must have seemed compelling at least, if not mandatory, as they all started this way (interestingly, they all broke the cube into several parts of equal form and dimensions). But at this stage already, we notice irreconcilable differences in the reasons for and the expectations from bisecting the cube. Ethel wanted to do it because she thought it would lead her to 'exceed the usual and be exceptional and original', which to her was what 'everyone wishes'. To Debby, it seems, it never occurred that leaving the cube in its 'simple and original' state, to use Ethel's phrase, was a real possibility. The exercise said you could add or subtract, but Debby read should into 'could'. She never tried additional or optional interpretations, even when disappointed with her results. Apparently, she could not relate her failure to make progress to an inadequacy of her departure points, namely that the cube be decomposed into equal parts and that those be reassembled in an attractive way. Ethel, on the other hand, saw clearly that there was more than one option. When she found that she was unable to capitalize on the 'decompose-recompose' policy, she immediately resorted to the only other possible interpretation she was able to discern, one of preserving the 'simple and original cube' (Ethel used the phrase 'simple and original cube' several times in her brief account) and getting excitement through 'the play of spaces inside'. Neither Ethel nor Debby tried alternative approaches within the 'add- subtract' paradigm (other than the attempts Debby tells us about, but of which we have no evidence). Facing failure, one of them abandoned it and the other compromised her expectations. This is especially interesting because both students were exposed to their classmates' endeavours and the instructor's comments. We do not know at this point whether an 'interpretative space' is bounded, among others by a person's domain- specific experience and the possession of a wide reper- toire of plausible interpretations. I would argue that this is at least partially true, as access to precedents makes it easier to evoke metaphors, which, as suggested by Sch6n, can be congenial to interpretations. 7 My observa- tions show that novice designers sometimes use analo- gies, but practically never metaphors, s

Gordon's starting point was more complex. He made a series of interrelated design moves that amounted to the specific interpretation which informed all the rest of his work. Like his friends he decided to take the cube apart,


but not because it was mandatory nor because it seemed a generally promising move towards success. He did it because he objected to a particular property of the cube as he saw it: its static state. The ability to identify this property and form a stance on it made it possible to think of a way to react to it. 'Movement' as suggested by a spiral made of several spaces, or volumes, emerged as a composite answer (movement plus a specific kind of movement). If it were not for the match boxes, a different answer may have been conceived. Small cubes can be seen as originating in a bigger cube (as cubes, being platonic forms, will always be kindred to other cubes), thus satisfying the need to preserve a 'cube idea'. A spiral cannot be described by less than three volumes and Gordon sensed immediately that in terms of cubic metres, the original cube could be divided into three volumes for which appropriate plans could be worked out. A quick calculation confirmed this feeling (Figure 3d).

The elements in Gordon's interpretation displayed the 'good fit' relationship among them, which lends stability to the 'closed structures' they create. The sequence of inferences may be changed and the individual elements can withstand transformation (as indeed happened along the process, as Gordon worked on his models) without disruption to the global interpretation. If we return to the model of the process of designing I introduced earlier, we can say that the interpretation became possible because Gordon personalized the programme: he transformed the requirement to maintain a cube idea into a demand to produce a form that has its origin in the cube. Movement came in as an independent input that modified the task definition. The volumatic spiral is a spatial expression of that interpretation, although we have no way of knowing whether it is a concluding end or a generating start of the chain of inferences and reasoning that we refer to as design moves. Debby thought of 'fun' in much the same way as Gordon thought of movement, but was unable to use this concept to modify the rest of her thinking on the task, and it remained an isolated and powerless concept. A careful hypothesis we can bring up at this point maintains that like in the combination lock, a certain minimum number of elements must come into interac- tion as a threshold condition for the emergence of a useful interpretation.

We do not discuss here the validity of Gordon's interpretation, nor do we grade it in comparison with Ethel's or Debby's interpretations. To what extent did they maintain a 'cube idea'? (We would have to deal with the question if we were to assess the designs as architectural products, but since our interest lies with the process and not the product, we shall avoid this query.) My point here is that each of them, in his or her own personal way, construed the demand to retain a cube idea so as to give it enough meaning to generate design intentions, which were expressed in design moves. Gordon's interpretation, immediately form-related, was the most complex and far reaching of the three, and it dominated the entire sequence of design moves that followed. However, all three cases illustrate cogently the

decisive role played by the point of departure in the process of designing.

DISCOVERY

To what extent does a designer have to determine his or her concerns and commitments ahead of time? Are all design moves premeditated? The answer to both questions is obviously negative. Many interpretations result from interests not embedded in task definitions and some come to bear on a process at an advanced stage. What we want to discuss here is how new design intentions and commitments which do not stem directly from the subject-matter and which are not on the designer's agenda a priori, come into being and effect the process. I contend that designers who experiment with their material intensively enough encounter unexpected new situations that lead them to see issues and problems in new ways. When this happens the potential for making discoveries becomes wide open.

Debby tells us about the discovery she made concerning the stairs in her plan. She concentrated on them 'not because they are the most important element, but because I felt they were going to pose a certain problem'. While attempting to frame that problem, by trying different stair layouts, she discovered she could give the stair much greater importance than she had done hitherto. The general location of the stairs was fixed by the fact that only at one place was there vertical overlap among the three different levels of the structure. But since the volume was small and all dimensions were minimal, Debby was after the least space-consuming solution. The idea to wave space conservation when it comes to the stairs was completely novel and foreign to any previous design concepts she entertained, except, maybe, the wish for excitement and 'fun' (she never made that connection). Her stair only led to two small bedrooms and a bath, but with more experience and access to references (such as a Renaissance 'grand stair'), she might have developed a design interpretation which rests on a large, graceful stair as a centerpiece of an otherwise tight space.

Debby's discovery led to a sequence of design moves which helped stablize her compromised interpretation of the task and lent it credibility. The stair in its 'grander' version resolved some functional problems (access to mid-level) and added extra quality (lightwell), thus reinforcing her solution with new layers of significance. She made other, less fruitful, but probably not less important discoveries. The change of scale in her basic building block resulted from a discovery that her initial tiny cubes describe spaces too small for any anticipated use. The transformation from small cube to larger prism, twice in floor area and different in geometrical properties, was not brought to full fruition in this project. But it would be easy to demonstrate how it could have become decisive, had Debby been able to incorporate more design criteria into her search.

Gordon made a different kind of discovery, which he

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did not refer to as such. He found out that he could not converge two of his design principles. One called for leaving the cube's visual space uninterrupted, with no partitions. The other suggested a bathroom, obviously partitioned, right in the middle of that space. The conflict resulted in a decision on priorities and in the acceptability of compromise, an important discovery regarding design intentions and expectations.

Whether Ethel made significant discoveries along the process of designing, is hard to determine. We could possibly describe her realization that she was unable to materialize the 'deformed' cube dream as a discovery. The line between discovery and realization can sometimes be fine indeed. But she outlined two options at the very beginning, and the quick withdrawal to the safer grounds of the unaltered cube, suggests despair rather than discovery. Nowhere else in Ethel's work or her story do we find anything that can be referred to as discovery.

P L A Y

Interestingly, Ethel is also the only one in our sample who did not use the verb play to describe her activities. She did use the word as a noun several times and so did Debby. But Debby used it mainly as a verb, and Gordon exclusively so.

The word 'play', both as noun and verb, is often used in discussion of architecture and designing. As a noun meaning excitement, interest and contrast, 'play' is used in the visual arts, the performing arts and literature. One of the famous examples in architecture is Le Corbusier's definition: 'Architecture is the skillful, correct and magnificent play of volumes assembled in light'. 9 When Ethel talks about the 'play of lines', 'a play of levels' or 'a play of spaces inside', she has in mind something akin to what Le Corbusier thought of. The same is true for Debby, when she explains the advantage of her new stair layout by saying: ' . . . and [the landings] also provide play in the high s p a c e . . . ' . This is interesting, but in no way unique to design. I should therefore like to take a closer look at how play is used as a verb; in our samples, mostly as 'playing'.

How is playing related to design moves, to discovery, and therefore to interpretation? The generic relationship between play and creative endeavour has attracted the attention of many psychologists, yet we still know little about it. Freud related day dreaming, which he saw as a prerequisite for imaginative writing, to playing. He talks about 'the hypothesis that imaginative creation, like day dreaming, is a continuation of and substitute for the play of childhood'. Elsewhere in the same text he says: ' . . . the writer does the same as a child at play, he creates a world of fantasy which he takes very seriously; that is, he invests it with a great deal of effect, while separating it sharply from reality'. 10 The notion of a created world of fantasy, which is sharply separated from reality, is of great interest. Contemporary Constructivists such as Nelson Goodman 11 and Jerome Bruner 12 emphasize the role of specialized, relative, micro-worlds in the making

of things, particularly in art and literature. Donald Sch6n talks about 'design worlds', virtual in nature, within which design activities take place, ~3 and I have shown elsewhere that such virtual worlds tend to be surrogate in the case of design by children, s For children design is indeed play, while adults 'play' when designing, in the sense that 'reality' as represented in their knowledge about the task at hand does not off-hand provide design ideas or interpretations; to construct interpretations the designer must break away from that preordained reality and replace it with a relative reality, or world, which sustains his or her attempts to construe the task. Play, in this sense, signifies search. I believe I can support this hypothesis with examples from Gordon's and Debby's cases.

Gordon describes as play what he was doing when first hunting for an appropriate concept: 'I reached the general idea by playing with match boxes'. Likewise, Debby tells us what she did with her Lego cubes: ' I . . . combined pairs of cubes and started playing with prisms'. Unlike Gordon her play did not yield the expected outcome; playing as an activity is independent of consequences. Debby continues her description by reporting: 'The number of options decreased; however a whole day elapsed with me still playing'. When her play proved to lead nowhere, she was forced to stop and make an arbitrary decision. Her account of that instant states: 'I had little choice but to put an end to the search'. Debby literally uses 'play' and 'search' as synonyms. In the general process of interpretation in designing, playing means the conducting of 'loose' experiments, whose purpose is to elicit hypotheses that are sensible enough to make it possible to switch to 'tighter', or controlled experiments, in order to confirm or discon- firm the hypotheses. Play-search experiments in designing always take place in the visual domain and their success depends on the designer's ability to perceive, represent, transform and manipulate physical form (what Howard Gardner calls 'spatial intelligence' 14), on the way to what I refer to as an interpretation.

Finally, I would like to assess the meaning of 'play' in designing in terms of Piaget's definitions. He discerns three principal categories of play (Exercise play, Symbo- lic play and Games with rules). There is also 'a fourth [category], which serves as a transition between symbolic play and non-playful activities or "serious" adaptions . . . out of symbolic play there develop games of construction, which are initially imbued with play symbolism, but tend later to constitute genuine adaptions (mechanical constructions, etc) or solutions to problems and intelligent creations. 15 The fourth category fits our case very well and it seems to me that a lot is to be gained by taking a close look at the role of playing in designing. A more thorough investigation is, unfortu- nately, beyond the scope of this discussion.

INTERPRETATIONS REVISITED

We have seen how critical the formation of an interpreta-


tion at the outset of a design effort can be. We have also observed how discovering new ways of seeing situations in mid-process can help consolidate a design proposition by giving it, or part of it, a new interpretation. We happen to not have, in our limited sample, an example of radical transformations at an advanced stage of designing, but we are aware that, admittedly somewhat rarely, they do occur in professional practice. I would like to conclude by reinforcing these claims with vignettes from testimony by authoritative architectural and musical practitioners and with philosophical commentary.

As part of a research project I am involved in, I recently had a conversation with Mario Botta about his design attitudes and habits. He was presented with an outline of a small (fictional) building with six optional entry points and was asked to work out the implications of these entrances. He was uneasy with the request, more so than half a dozen other experienced architects who were asked to do the very same thing. He explained his reservations: 'I am very embarrassed, because my process is normally linked to a spatial idea. Here, everything is possible. If you tell me to enter here - I will give [you] a solution. If you tell me to enter there - I will give another solution. It is difficult for me to choose; I do not think it is the architect's objective to choose the best conditions. On the contrary, I think all conditions are good. One has to reinterpret them each t i m e . . . '

He talked for a long time about the predominance of spatial ideas, or rather a single spatial idea as the source of every design: 'Normally when I have to control a space, I look for a guiding reference mark, I must have a spatial idea'. To further explain what he meant, he told the story of one design project and how it came into being. He was invited to design a new church in a village in Northern Italy which was badly hit by an avalanche that destroyed the old church along with many other buildings: ' . . . So from the beginning my biggest concern was of course to get to know the situation, to start a dialogue with the situation, with the site. But after that first a c q u a i n t a n c e . . , the critical reading of a site is already the first act of the project . . . When you have read the situation critically, you immediately have the project in your h e a d . . . I went to see that situation [the village], and then in memory, I had the houses of the village in mind, [and] I made a first sketch. Intuitively. Then I worked for six months, I forgot it [the sketch] completely. I worked for six months on this idea of houses and I did the entire project, I made a model, I made the spaces, and like a miracle, at the end of the project, it is exactly like the first sketch I had made. I find this fantastic. I have completely forgotten! Other constraints about which I had known nothing in advance came into play: materials, price, organization etc. But at the end the result i s . . . ' and he laughed. To my question whether this happens to him often, he replied: 'Almost always'.

Botta's case provides us with an unusually lucid example of how dominant an initial interpretation can be. But it also elaborates on the nature of interpretation in architectural design. The site is an all important factor; it

is the situation that one is invited to assimilate, to appropriate, by interpreting it. Each situation and every condition requires a new interpretation. Interpreting a situation means taking a critical reading of it. By 'critical reading', I think, Botta means the identification of salient features and their combination into a coherent spatial picture, which invites a particular intervention. From there almost everything else can flow.

Let us now draw our attention to mid-course discoveries that completely transform the picture. My example is taken from the domain of music, as I think processes of musical composition resemble those of architectural designing. To design and to compose seems to me to be almost entirely synonymous. The composer Luciano Berio offers the following introspective commentary, relating in particular to his various Allelujah, Sequenza and Chemins pieces: 'One way or another, during the planning, the execution and the definition of details [of a musical composition], it happens that new possibilities reveal themselves and new relationships are discovered, upon which I decide to tarry without changing the character and the logic of the original plan . . . In the process of the realization of a comprehensive project, during the definition of details, as I said before - it may also happen that the new discovery and the abundance of the unexpected [details] become so important that the plan must be changed. 16

Like Botta, Berio gives an example to illustrate his abstract narrative. But this time we are looking at a metaphor and not at an episode from his practice. He likens composing to the taking of a trip to a foreign land. One may plan the voyage, prepare for it, learn about sites to be visited, etc. But to be truly successful the trip must include unanticipated stops, changes of route, itinerary and means of travel. New details must be paid attention to as they become discernible. Discoveries, big and small, lend the trip its richness and flavour. Ila architectural as in musical composition, when there are enough newly defined details, a new global picture may emerge.

The interpretative processes described by Botta and Berio seem incongruous with one another at first, but they do not necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. It is true that certain designers (in architecture, music and other domains) have overriding tendencies to start with a 'strong' interpretation which they preserve intact, while others build it up little by little as they go along and are wide open to change. It is also possible, however, to do both. We must fine-tune our tools and attend to the subtlest transformation in order to understand the emergence, the growth and the maturation of interpretations as well as their diminution, displacement or disappearance. To do that we must treat interpretation as a process. I know of no finer description of this process than Wittgenstein's, which is as convincing as it is brief (we may bear in mind that he studied architecture): ' . . . By "intention" I mean here what uses a sign in a thought. The intention seems to interpret, to give the final interpretation, which is not a further sign or picture, but something else - the thing that cannot be further

244 DESIGN STUDIES

interpreted . . . What happens is not that this symbol cannot be further interpreted, but: I do no interpreting. I do not interpret, because I feel at home in the present picture. When I interpret, I step from one level of thought to another. 17

R E F E R E N C E S

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3 Alexander, C Notes on the synthesis of form Harvard University Press, Cambridge, USA (1964)

4 Goldsehmidt, G House for Bilby: Children as Designers Monograph, Technion, Haifa (1985)

5 Naisberg, E Non-continuous steps in architectural design: Examination of design processes, first year students, Technion, Haifa (1986)

6 Goldschmidt, G 'Problem representation versus domain of solution: Some examples from architectural design' In a Special Issue on Architectural Education, Martin Symes (Ed), J. Architect. Planning Res., (in press)

7 Sch6n, D A 'Generative metaphor: A perspective on problem-setting in social policy', In Metaphor and Thought, Ortony, A (Ed.), Cambridge University Press (1979)

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9 Guiton, J (Ed.) The ideas ofLe Corbusier on architecture and urban planning, George Braziller, NY, USA (1981)

10 Freud, S 'The relation of the poet to day dreaming (1908)' In On creativity and the unconscious, Harper and Row, NY, USA, (1958)

11 Goodman, N Ways of worldmaking Hackett Publishing Company, Indianopolis (1978)

12 Bruner, J Actual minds, possible worlds Harvard University Press, Cambridge, USA (1986)

13 Seh6n, D A The reflective practitioner Basic Books, NY, USA (1983)

14 Gardner, H Frames of mind Basic Books, NY, USA (1985) 15 Piaget, J The psychology of the child Basic Books, NY, USA

(1969) 16 Berio, L Intervista Sulla Musica (Hebrew translation)

Hakibutz Hameuchad, Tel Aviv (1984) 17 Wittgenstein, L (Zettel, Anscome, G E M and von Write,

G H (Eds)), Notes 231 and 234, University of California Press, Berkeley, USA (1970)


Interpretation – its role in architectural designing

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