“Buildings do not get sick, change their mind, have new buildings enter their lives, suffer emotional trauma, question their identities, have desire or fear, or fall in love—unless you believe in Rem Koolhaas’s story in ‘Delirious New York.’”
When talking about design in architecture, the meaning is clear. Essentially, it's understood as conceiving, developing, and executing an idea to solve a set of architectural issues in a prescriptive set of documents for the purposes of constructing a building.
When using design in general terms, it is similarly thought of as a problem-solving process toward an aesthetically engineered solution—for example, in fashion, industry, and high technology.
Having used the word all of my academic and professional life, I started to wonder if there's more to its meaning and deployment that I had previously thought.
So, I decided to take a closer look in the hopes that a new perspective or insight might emerge which could be applied to bigger questions beyond the problem-solving mind it's typically sourced in.
Here's what I found:
The word evolved out of the Renaissance's conception of humanism, which was initially used in the context of life decisions—specifically regarding intention, purpose, and destiny—rather than just the fabrication of physical objects.
It referred to a mental plan, disegno. For artists and architects like Vasari, it was a scheme or a designated objective one intended to achieve as a life purpose. It was often used to describe things "marked out" by fate or providence.
The application to the physical "making of things" (art, architecture, and manufacturing) was a later evolution, emerging only after the word had already been established as a term for conceptualizing intent or strategy.
The intent here is to show that whether used in strict professional practice or in the larger scope of life, both uses have utility and relevance for an architect or developer when investigating a project or questioning the arc of their professional life itself.
Of course, there are significant differences between these two approaches to design:
I am not implying that the design of a life decision is like designing objects; the stakes are substantially different. However, I am suggesting that the mechanism itself is similarly useful.
Life is not controllable like a building, but it can be seen like a site that grows and expands with the investment in it, starting with a Site Analysis.
The first thing an architect or developer does when commencing a project is evaluate and analyze a site for its conditions, including hidden problems, constraints, best use, fit for its programmatic purpose, and an idea that best expresses and reconciles those criteria with the financial terms required to fulfill it.
Appropriating that process as an analogy, what might a personal or professional site analysis look like?
One can extrapolate and see how using the design stages—concept, schematic, design development, construction documentation, and turnover—might be adapted to life decisions:
A key to this process that precedes most decisions is one's creative intuition. Good design almost always begins with an intuition.
In both architectural and personal design, intuitive awareness is a distinct force that helps a site—or a life—fulfill itself.
The source of intuition and how it works is hard to pin down scientifically. There are many theories. None of which actually explain it. Whether embedded in the prefrontal cortex (which integrates emotions and pattern recognition) or in cognitive psychology where the brain records statistical regularities for quick, "gut"-based observations, no proof fully explains it.
Yet almost all humans feel they possess intuition—sometimes basing the most important life decisions on it.
Ancient societies trusted their intuition when determining the location to build a temple or pyramid, or an abode. Even when searching for water in arid lands intuition was often deployed as a practice called dowsing.
It marks the moment where the operator ceases to be a detached observer and becomes an integrated component of the site's topography.
This demonstrates that human perception, when properly calibrated, can function as a precision instrument for uncovering hidden vectors.
Places like Kathmandu or Jerusalem are not just physical coordinates; they are "high-intensity nodes" that inspired societies to build around them attracting people from their inceptions until today.
Ultimately, it comes down to the alignment of internal and external systems.
Intuition > Design > Awareness > Resolution > Result
Whether it's finding water with a wand or the seeking fulfilment or stillness, a "design success" is realized through the alignment of the user's "program" with the environment's capacity to achieve an integrated goal.
In designing a site or a life decision, becoming aware of the elements and progressive steps, deploying them critically and methodically to ensure effectiveness, and structuring a reliable, realizable plan is design in its original meaning: to achieve an intention, purpose, or destiny.