Finishing

People prefer starting to finishing. Baptism or funeral, is there a doubt as to which you would rather attend. Yet all of us work on projects that start, develop and must take a final form. Doing well is so difficult that there are people called “closers” who have the rare skill to seal a deal. In running, some distance runners have a “kick” developed by mental and physical training giving them a last burst of energy so they don’t fade before the finish line. For those in the productive arts, time runs out, patience ends, distractions accumulate, and maybe almost finishing is good enough.

Designers in particular struggle with finishing because their work is abstracted from the reality envisioned. Architects, landscape architects and urban designers make drawings, not parks, cities or buildings. Their work represents what will be built, and the competence and completeness of their drawings and models insure a smooth or turbulent construction phase. Designers are people too. They also get frustrated with the design process, with unclear directions from clients, with higher than anticipated costs and unreasonable schedule demands as well as the often conflicting pressures from numerous stakeholders that public projects engage. Then there are the permit reviewers, inspectors and contractors and their requirements – it’s a long list. Young designers require time to develop the patience and fortitude required to finish a complex set of drawings. Experience has this lesson: a sloppy ending has serious consequences. And this lesson also has a more positive side: there is joy in polishing. A well-planned design project allocates time for all phases with sufficient cushion to absorb the unexpected without compromising the final effort and result.

One technique to carry you through is to imagine that this project is your last. What if this work completes your career? What is the benefit of experience if that understanding doesn’t bring you to this point where it is possible for this to be the best work you’ve ever done? And even if it can’t be your best for some reason beyond your control, you can still act as if it is finding the resources to sidestep excuses and finish to your satisfaction. One never knows if the opportunity to do more will present itself. The resources to finish well may depend on accepting this possibility.

A great wine has a “finish.” A smooth, rich and interesting lingering aftertaste confirms the beauty of a satisfactory and enjoyable experience. The taste plays through an entire sequence. Certainly everything we make has a beginning and is completed to some degree, but only the best work finishes well. In design, the great advantage is anticipation. Designers know the general process and can guide the steps. Remembering Vitruvius and his architectural triad – strength, utility and grace – finishing employs these as motives and not just as a way to consider design. The designer too needs mental strength, respect for the usefulness of a well-performing design, and the grace to finish with style.

Thickening (a design)

Take a cup of hot soup stock and add a teaspoon of flour to make a paste, blending well until the flour is absorbed.  Add the paste back into the boiling soup while stirring constantly.  Simmer for a while before adding other ingredients.                                 

Joy of Cooking (1975, 168)

There is a point in the design process when it is time to thicken it. Continuing the cooking metaphor, if the stock represents the raw ideas of a schematic design from which you want to extract and trap every vestige of flavor, than the thickening agent can be thought of as whatever the productive imagination uses to advance and develop the design. Schematic explorations need to be distilled, and doing so concentrates and reinforces whatever is good and gets rid of what doesn’t work well.

There are ways to do this. The strategic selection of building materials for a consistent design vocabulary will unify the various elements. Selecting allows the implications and scales of specific materials to inform design elements. Further, allowing a sense of measure that all materials have means that vague suggestions of forms become precise declarations where materials with exact characteristics fit together. It is time to drop the guiding lines that establish programmatic alignments, orientations and spatial relationships. While these lines show the “why” of design decisions, they are distracting from final drawings meant for building permit review, bidding and construction, in other words, design execution.

For example, thinking through a material such as brick means that the hand-scaled nature of that material implies ways to build with it. All designed objects have planes, edges, corners and openings. Thinking through a particular material tells the designer in what way those aspects of a design may be considered. Building materials have such different characteristics that it is impossible to consider them interchangeably. And their selection can contribute to the design intent through association. Different impressions are perceived when seeing a brick house, or one made of stone, wood or metal. Expressions of permanence or portability, or of containment or release become clear more so than through decisions about size or detailing although these, of course, eventually contribute.

Whichever type of material is chosen to thicken the soup, it is important to remember that invention is not a matter of making something new. Rather, it is acts of separating distinct moments of intention and assigning them physical presence, and of combining these parts into a harmonious composition. This activity depends on capitalizing on many things: the inherent character of each material, the possibilities and limitations of structural systems, as well as geometric form and arrangement. Doing so well is the difference between chicken noodle soup and consommé. As the names reveal, one tells you everything and the other alludes to the alchemical methods of combining specific materials in certain proportions, and simmering to allow time for reactions and for ingredient flavors to intensify. Exploring choices of materials to find your preferred thickening agent leads to naming, and this helps distinguish what kind of soup – or design – you are making.