Finding a Solution: Design Mysteries Series

Making Stuff, 12/8 2017

We’re always searching……….

Everyone is searching for something, the answer, a cure, a solution, the right word, even the perfect dress. Finding the solution is a search that designers go on almost everyday whether they find it or not depends on a lot of things going right in the case of finding “it” or wrong in the case of not finding a good enough solution.

In order to “find” something you have to be willing to search and get lost and ask for directions. Asking for directions can be a very important skill as is having stuff laying around in a haphazard way so when an idea comes along there’s stuff to make it with. Today I made a model from some 3” X 5” cards that were clipped together with a paper clip. I’m not sure why they were just sitting there but because of their size and shape they were perfect to construct a modular idea I am working on. Also because stuff just is lying around “it” has a way of bumping into or falling on top of other stuff that creates interesting juxtapositions. Serendipity happens because we aren’t expecting it. Sometimes playful approaches to searching bring greater rewards and are more fun. Although I find all the methods of finding solutions equally rewarding. Whether it’s the throwing everything at the wall approach or the quiet methodically research approach all have their place in developing ideas.

Le Corbusier. Creation is a Patient Search. Praeger. University of Michigan. 1960

Finding solutions also requires enormous patience. Le Corbusier wrote a wonderful little book, Creation is a Patient Search chronicling his life and work from student projects to the convent Sainte Marie de La Tourette. There are sketches of ideas that took Le Corbusier decades to get built and lots of ideas that never got built. Sometimes the solution to a design problem is lying there waiting to be found other times patience pays off.

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Design Mysteries Series
Bruce Hannah 2017©