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word-picture that describes the wholeness of a place - since “it is immensely hard to help people
including:
2.2
The Small Gate marks the outer end of the Entrance Street. It is a small, imposing building, which has
height and volume.
Hosoi, Nodera, Suzuki
6.6
The Library, also a two story building, has a large quiet reading room on the second floor, with
shelves, and tables, and carrels, and beautiful windows.
Kajiyama, Oginawa, Tomizu, Sato
7.7
There is also one garden, so secret, that it does not appear on any map. The importance of this pattern
is that it never must be publicly announced, must not be in the site plan; except for a few, nobody should
be able to find it.
Hosoi
In parallel, he and his team mapped the topography - land forms, slopes, trees, ridges, roads -
of the physical site. They then began the hard work of bringing the two systems of centers, pat-
terns and places, together into a simple, beautiful site plan. They planted hundreds of six foot
tall bamboo sticks topped with colorful ribbons to identify places, spaces, and relationships. By
seeing-moving these flags for months, they were able to discover the plan. They augmented this
visualization with topographic models of the site, using pieces of balsa wood for buildings.
After trial and error, they fit all these patterns and places into a wonderful, generative whole.
In this story we see the synthesis of embodied and extended cognition. There are more dimen-
sions to architecture than Tetris, so it's even more vital we use models in the world to shift
minds. Planning is making. Maps, sketches, words, and wireframes are still essential, but it's
also vital that we design in the medium of construction. How else will we imagine cross-channel
experiences and the Internet of Things into life?
Last year, I worked on a responsive redesign for a database publisher. Our team built wire-
frames and design comps to conduct quick, cheap experiments, and then an HTML prototype to
enable new loops of build-measure-learn. Each of these cognition amplifiers is unique. Together
they teach us that one way is the wrong way. As architects, designers, and developers, we each
bring discrete value to think-do and plan-build. All too often, classification obstructs collabora-
tion. It splits us and them, and our products show the seams, and our users bear the scars. The
things we make are reflections of how we see and sort ourselves, so let's classify-plan accord-
ingly, and be mindful that making frames is work.
Re-Framing
Recently, I enjoyed a tour of the Inspired Teaching School. It's a public charter in Washington,
D.C. that cultivates inquiry-based learning by transforming the role of the teacher from informa-
tion provider to “instigator of thought.” Instead of showing students how to do their work,
teachers challenge the kids to do it themselves. It's a tiny habit called “don't touch my pencil”
that makes a big impact. The other part I recall is the artwork. I remember a colorful drawing of
animals in three categories - real, imaginary, impossible - and being inspired by the freedom
with which kids invent impossible creatures.
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