TEXTUAL HEALING

The one thing that has surprised me the most in my first year of architecture at Delfts University of Technology is how there is this general image of what skills an architect should or shouldn’t have. In many ways I completely agree with this image that has been created of the things an architect should be good at, yet there is this one slightly “painful area”. At every subject so far I get told how we, architecture students, probably are all “visually set” and, with that, writing (as a way to transfer our ideas) isn’t something we’re good at. Maybe a little prejudgemental but ok, so far so good. But what strikes me the most is when people, yes even architects and professors at our faculty guiding us through our design projects tell me writing isn’t something we’re supposed to be good at. Yes, I figured that architects over all aren’t phenomenal readers, myself included (in fact, there is a fair chance only one twentieth of the people receiving our magazine will actually read this article, if you’re one of them: hi there, keep up the good work you’re almost halfway!). I do enjoy books with impressive black and whites of structures, shapes and edges more than a 100 pages long paper about the same. But this doesn’t mean we should neglect the importance of formulating our ideas, not only in images but in actual words.

Anecdote: A first year bachelor student, well prepared, is about to start his final presentation. He hadn’t even started yet when his mentor grabs a pen and a sheet that says: Assessment Form ON1. It is even before he finished his first sentence his mentor had filled in the entire form, folded it up, pressed the cap back on the pen and neatly put them both back in his bag. A little startled the guy continued his presentation, knowing he still had about 9 minutes and 50 seconds to go. There was this awkward moment of silence where you felt everyone thinking: “well… he might as well stop talking then...”

Image 1: Scene from the music video of Sexual Healing, Marvin Gaye - adapted

Most of us see the final presentation of our design projects as a short rather irrelevant summary of the work they’ve done in the past 10 weeks. It is more seen as a point in the future when everything needs to be finished than an event itself . No wonder if this is the message that gets sent to some of us while presenting our work. To me presentations should be one of the most important parts of design projects. It’s where you get the chance and full attention to try and convince as many people as you can of your ideas. Liking or approving of a buildings appearance and understanding its floorplans is something important but also quite straightforward. But presenting and literally articulating your ideas to convince people is a much more powerful tool to use when trying to persuade someone in approving of your design. One may dislike a designs appearance but eventually approve of the idea that’s behind it. That’s not something that can be done by just sketches, renders and floorplans. Presenting and writing about your design should take a much more important place in the designing subjects. Sometimes we think we know exactly what we want and how we want it. We have this picture in our head, we draw some chaotic lines on sketching paper and we grab scissors and glue to put all these ideas together in a 3D model in hope to convey our thoughts to one another. And most of the time this works, the image is there, your idea has been transferred and we have a general view of what the intentions are. But there are also many cases in which we think our idea is clear enough but the message is just not coming through. That’s when we need to formulate our ideas in another way.

It’s not only writing and presenting or only sketching and making models etc. It’s the interaction between both that makes our design complete. It’s because of that I think they both should be treated as equally important. So that I can say, whenever I feel as awkward as described in the anecdote: “well… when I get this feeling, I want textual healing.”//

SOURCES

- Marvin Gaye - Sexual Healing (Video). (2013, December 6). [YouTube]. Retrieved June 2, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=rjlSiASsUIs