In the end it all comes down to the idea. Obviously there is no single “idea”. Didn’t Plato say that we don’t invent anything new, just remember what we’ve forgotten? James Webb Young has identified in the classic publication: “A technique for producing ideas” the various parts that an idea-person will need to go through to be able to come up with great ideas. And remembering “forgotten ideas” is one of them. An idea will come from having a ” vast library” of images, texts, experiences in ones mind and being able to connect these with the issues at hand. I have written earlier on this blog about seeing it. James Young describes this very graphically as before there is the idea it feels like one is on a vast ocean, while all of a sudden an island pops up. Sailing on the vastness of a homogenic blueness, the island appears, but it has a foundation on which it is based.

Analogous the idea must have a foundation as well, and this can be a combination of hard facts as well as semingly unrelated elements or disciplines. While studying architecture, I hardly read any books on “architecture”, but was more interested in books on geography, or psychology. Multi and cross disciplinary studies are the thing for producing ideas, stepping out, over borders, having no respect for limitations, undulging in imitations and healthy plagiarism is what we need if we want to come up with ideas. Tom Peters is urging for companies to take on designers on their boards, my arguement is to create a mix of disciplines and backgrounds in any team or board. Don’t forget that Darwin was a geographer by training and stumbled into biology to formulate evolution theory and Einstein was a third class engineer. The future is to the Jack of all trades who can bring in unusual perspectives and thus great ideas.

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.