Some comments about a standard "architecture" book of one pager pearls of wisdom.
There is not much too this book, then again, "less is more" .
#21 - An Architect knows something about everthing. An engineer knows everything about one thing.
"An architect is a generalist, not a specialist. "
This is consistent with becoming a Generalising specialist.
#29 Being process-oriented, not product-driven, is the most important and difficult skill for a designer to develop.
I take "process-oriented" in this context to mean improving your own processes and not the general interpretation of burdensome processes.
Pragmatically this "process-orientated" statment is about focusing on the process of design and improving those skills, in place of speed of product development.
Another aspect on this is balancing learning efficiency with task efficiency, which Jason Yip mentioned in a recent presentation.
Tip #29 has nine sub points, here are a few of my favourites:
- seeking to understand a design problem before chasing after solutions;
- making design investigations and decisions holistically
- working fluidly between concept-scale and detail-scale
- making design decisions conditionally - that is, with the awareness that they may or may not work out as you continue toward a final solution; See also "Considerations in communicating the Intent of Design".
- Knowing when to change and when to stick with previous decisions
- Always asking "What If...?" regardless of how satisfied you are with your solutions.
#45 Three Levels of knowing
- Simplicity
- world view of the child or uninformed adult.
- Complexity
- the ordinary adult world view. An awareness of complex systems in nature and society but an inability to discern clarifying patterns and connections.
- Informed Simplicity
- an enlightened view of reality. It is founded upon an ability to discern or create clarifying patterns within complex mixtures. Pattern recognition is a crucial skill for an architect, who must create a highly ordered building amid many competing and frequently nebulous design considerations.
#16/26 - Parti and Changing Parti
"Parti derives from understandings that are nonarchitectural and must be cultivated before architectural form can be born."
Parti has been in "architecture" for a long time, it also gets mentioned in ux articles.
At its most ambitious, parti derives from matters more transcendent than mere archtiecture.
I like the abstract notions behind it.
#48 If you can't explain your ideas to your grandmother in terms that she understands, you don't know your subject well enough.
"Some architects, instructors, and students use overly complex (and often meaningless!) language in an attempt to gain recognition and respect.
Try not to let them get away with it and whatever you do don't imitate them."
When this happens to you, be critical, instead o blind obedience, practice selective observerance
When you are accused of this, take the time to try and draw a picture or explain it in whatever form suits you best.
#51 Beauty is due more to harmonious relationships amount the elements of a composition than to the elements themselves
"Build a car out of the most beautiful features of teh most stunning cars ever made. See if your friends will be seen in it with you."
#78 "The success of the masterpieces seems to lie not so much in their freedom from faults - indeed we tolerate the grossest errors in them all - but in the immense persuasiveness of a mind which has completely mastered its perspective."
Virginia Woolf.
#98 The Chinese symbol for crisis is comprised of two characters: one indicating 'danger', the other 'opportunity.'"
Whille it sounds good, the interpretation is false, see: pinyin.info and wikipedia
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Re #98 – my favourite Chinese character-myth is the one about the symbol for “argument” is the symbol for women, repeated twice, with the symbol for roof above them – literally “two women under the one roof”.