Scheming Schemes

Design begins with scheming. This imaginative act examines possible activities or experiences that are searching for realization. So the scheme becomes the pre-figurative declaration of what might be. From the Latin for ‘form,’ ‘figure,’ or even ‘style,’ early design sketches work through the designs’ complex combination of physical and metaphysical elements towards a resolution that encompasses what is critical to that particular design. Thus the materials used in this exploratory step are important. Usually pencil-drawn plan compositions on paper are helpful, less so computer programs, but this investigation can also be undertaken in three-dimensions with messy models of clay to allow easy building up and carving away, or with torn paper and found fragments to collage assemblages with surprising overlaps and juxtapositions.  

‘Scheme’ is a noun and a verb, and is similar to ‘plan’ in that regard. We make plan drawings that represent compositions, and in doing so we plan as an action setting up potential experience. Designers scheme by making schematics; so logically schematics are the evidence of scheming, which is difference from planning. If you search through the long list of the Oxford English Dictionary’s definitions, the one I prefer for ‘scheme’ is “to effect by contrivance or intrigue.”

This brings us to the delightful question of what is intrigue in design. There is no doubt that the productive arts – landscape architecture, architecture and urban design – are crafty arts; that is, their ideas evolve into reality through the craft of building. Marco Frascari wrote in “The Compass and the Crafty Art of Architecture” about tools used to contrive design intent. But, before the carefully chosen tool can be used craftily, I suggest a silent intrigue is required. Perhaps this intriguing consideration comes from schematic drawings and models that do not have true measure, but have measure in mind. So too, schematic drawings and models may not have true structure, but have weight and gravity in mind. Likewise, schematics may explore relationships:  the movement of body and eye, historic traces through time, or proposed futuristic visions of alternate social protocols. A scheme’s only purpose is to suggest intended presence with guidelines that recede as the bricks, wood and stone are formed on the site to stand in the light, to receive the rain, and to temper the situation as it affects people and their experience of place.

Thus the scheme is informed by design facts. The schematic investigation isn’t simply of abstractions, but has presence and significance because it considers the language (vocabulary and grammar) of material, light, wind, climate, topography, soil, structure, purpose, and context in a unified and harmonious whole. This phase of design is made up of acts of reciprocity between a scheme and its development, which means a continual going back and forth between schematic ideas and their implications. These can only be found by speaking and listening to the program in a process of continual becoming, leading to human activities made manifest in the operational landscape.