Heinrich Aldegrever:
Ornamental Design with a Bat in the Centre (1550)

"We approximately understand what we're doing …"

Design, like almost everything, seems different in theory than it does in practice. In theory, Design must be complete before construction begins. Practice finds considerable overlap. We might diligently try to fully flesh out aspirations beforehand, but our context shifts once we start moving dirt. We often cannot foresee what will become evident after we've exposed rafters and taken down walls. More than fine-tuning occurs regardless of how complete the design seemed during preliminary discussions. The contractor holds more responsibility than they'd ever willingly contract to deliver and always have. They're most likely to notice the small incongruences that could explode into disaster. They're the ones present to see the plan's emerging incompleteness. They're the ones tacitly charged with continually asking the most uncomfortable questions.

Spontaneously mustered conferences are called. Jesse, the structural guy who will perform the follow-on effort, held clues for the foundation builders and vice-versa. Pablo, our concrete contractor, admits to dreaming about his projects. Over the past weekend, he reported that something about this porch project had kept him up. He couldn't quite pinpoint the problem, but his intuition insisted that he was experiencing a problem blooming by his hand. Simultaneously, Kurt, our Painter acting as general contractor, kept bugging me about some details of the concrete piers' construction. I couldn't comprehend his cautions, though The Muse finally could. These converged with Pablo's dreams to find us kneeling as Pablo drew on a sheet of plywood with a Sharpie. We quickly saw the difficulty and understood the proper adaptation, Just-In-Time Designering.

The Muse and I had tried to do this refurbish right. We'd even hired a niece to create architectural plans and pictures with measurements and colors. That work was never completed and became a part of that phase of the effort when every attempt at completing anything relating to it failed. We retained some sketches of our intentions, but when it came to describing actual dimensions, Kurt had been right. We had not quite leached out all the remaining ambiguity and contradictions. Pablo has sensed it, and Kurt knew, too, if only he could communicate it. Jesse understood instantly, but he doesn't hang around this job site. A quick phone call created the necessary convergence. There will be more.

I admonish myself for not being more careful. Our process seems incredibly capricious, even dangerous. I suspect that the remodelers who constructed that floating brick frontwork just started stacking bricks, letting the emerging context define what they'd do next until it was finished. How is our process different? Maybe it isn't, but the quality of the participants seems more than adequate, but then every team probably insists the same. Back when I was supervising the construction of computer systems, the design was more of an aspiration. There were few tools to aid in effectively describing a construction out of context, and those that did exist seemed to insist upon wasted or wasteful-seeming effort. However scrupulous the initial investigation, it never took much to upset the utility of whatever was expected. A single change might echo through the entire system, rendering absurd much of the initial design work. Much design occurred as Designering, or we wouldn't deliver. Those who insisted too strenuously that we'd need to go back to design when part way through construction would be quietly spirited away, for they didn't seem to have the stomach to build real systems, anyway.

It will be a miracle if these proceedings produce what we intended. We must never forget that we are engaging in miracle creation, that we always were and always will be, too. Our intentions will, of course, experience some radical reworking along with everything else associated with the effort. If we can stay in touch, keep asking ourselves difficult questions, and take the proceedings seriously enough, but not too seriously, we might manage to create satisfaction. We will be Designering every inch of the way because some fresh presumption should properly be coming into sharper focus every day. We approximately understand what we're doing; the rest relies upon our adaptations.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Grace, #PureSchmaltz