Design never ends. That is what makes design live and sets it aside from theatre design. Let me explain, one of my favourite films is The Royal Tenenbaums. The set, the house in which the story takes place, is so strongly present in the film, it makes me watch the film over and over again, the set almost is the film. Woody Allen‘s Interiors and James Ivory’s Remains of the day (or most of Ivory’s films) are heavily dependend on the interiors for the mood of these films.

But this however remains out of reach for us, (ahumm) real-life designers, we can try to set a mood, but (and this is my personal opinion), I believe that the design should live and the architect should let go and leave the space to itself. I don’t believe in “total design”. Total design can only become total failure. Thus we should strive to design without an end in sight, leaving space for change. (Didn’t Rem Koolhaas once said that without architecture anything is possible?)
Examples of failure are numerous, in Chandigarh one can witness urban planning that strived but ultimately failed in creating a perfect city. Actually the failure is what makes the city interesting, banning cows failed, keeping it clean failed and the traffic lights were not working when I travelled through it.

In the October issue of the Harvard Business Review, there was a short article called “Embrace the dark side”. The author Michael Fanuele argues that companies should stop “selling fairy tales in a reality-TV world” and “that imperfections can actually be a source of great appeal”. I could not agree more: design, like brands, needs authenticity for it to become really acceptable. And authenticity can only come from design that does not take itself too serious and leaves the end open ended.