Gila: concept

Hello everybody,
Here is an email I sent to Jean this week, about concepts, I think it can be helpful to all of you:

I’ll try to clarify the term concept in design:

Concept is like the book of guidelines you read for class, it gives us the ability to decide what we should do in our design and what we shouldn't, it’s like set of rules that we create for ourselves in-order to make our design more coherent and consistent. It’s a declaration of your design's intentions.

When we don’t work with a concept, our design begins with solutions or “gimmicks”, there are lots of design options from which we can choose- most of the times it’s very hard to choose, so we found ourselves designing with “Mix and Match”, we look at design books, pick elements that we like without connecting them to each other, or to a bigger idea. that leads to frustration with the design because we don’t know what should be the next step, how to design or in other words, how to make the right design choices.

Concept doesn’t have to be abstract, it can start from the materials of the site, or from the details of the site(stones/rocks), it can relate to the users or to the actual use of the place, I can give you several options regarding how to think about a concept:

1. When you’re in the site, what do you feel about the site? what kind of thoughts to you have? How can you take these thoughts and ideas and create an idea?
2. What is your rational point of view about the site? What is good/bad about it and how do you think it needs to be changed?
3. Can you find some interesting pieces of information that can lead you to a general idea (history, story, people, sides, vegetation, topography, and so on)
4. what kind of story do you what to tell with your design? what kind of impression do you want your users to have?
   

5. Is there any general design question that you would like to ask in this project? Something that you can relate to in the site but it’s not necessary unique to the site, for example: the relationship between hard and soft material.

As I said before, the concept doesn’t have to be abstract but it has to be general enough to leave you some room for creativity. It need to be assertive and interesting.

And now for some examples:

• My undergraduate final project was about the main highway in Israel. After I studied that area I decided that I would want to examine the role of highways in the cityscape (very general, case study). My concept was that this highway is an integrated part of the city and that I would like to “insert the city into of the highway and the highway into of the city”. It wasn’t emotional or abstract at all, and it was based on my extremely long analysis (one whole semester).
• The project that I showed you- Maya Lin- wave field: the concept is ….”wave field”, when Maya Lin started to design this project she said(my guess):”my site IS a field of waves”, and I think it’s very obvious that she had this sentence in her mind though all the design process.

Let’s see how can we work with concepts, let’s take the site on Newbury Street, and say that my concept for this site is a “stage”. I analyzed the site, I learned that people really like to sit there and watch other people on the street, and also that Newbury Street is like a show, everybody comes to see and being seen. I will say to myself:"my project IS a stage".

I can design my site in several different ways with this concept:

• A risen stage, instead of 2 stairs(existing stage) I would like to create 5-10 stairs with a wide deck of wood, benches and parasols. My users will watch the street and the street becomes the stage.

• A lower stage, instead of 2 stairs up(existing stage), I would like to create 5-10 stairs down, and to create a mezzanine floor between the street and the level of the T platform. Now my site is the stage, my users-the show, and the people on the street- the audience.

• A stage for horticulture, I can’t plant trees there, but I can fill the site with containers on wheels in all kinds of sizes and shapes, and to create an exhibition of plants.

• A real stage for small shows, I can create a theater shape with small walls to sit on (1.5-2 feet tall) and a place for the artist to perform on.

So you can see that the concept doesn’t limit you, it just defines the rules of the design.

I hope that clears things a little.

Gila