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Interpretation: its role in architectural designing

Article in Design Studies · October 1988

DOI: 10.1016/0142-694X(88)90009-9

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Gabriela Goldschmidt
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 Interpretation: its role in
architectural designing
Gabriela Goldschmidt
Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion, Haifa, Israel

Through studies of processes of architectural designing, a sub-process of interpretation emerges as the

single most important force in the shaping of design solutions. An interpretation is formed when design
moves, which are enacted on knowledge pertaining to the task, transform its pieces into a stable structure
by achieving a unique relationship among them. A look at first-year students' design efforts demonstrates
how, through construing the task, interpretations are or are not generated. The potential for creating
global interpretations is likely to be found mostly at the starting point, which reflects the designer's state
of mind at the outset of the design endeavour. Different ways in which experimentation is carried out are
analysed, notably play and discovery, without which it is hard to imagine a process of composition of
pieces of knowledge. Play and discovery are shown to induce new interpretations and to help substantiate
old ones. The contribution of long chains of moves and the timely generation and evaluation of design
criteria and constraints is pointed out. These different cognitive aspects reveal how central an activity
interpreting is throughout the entire process of architectural designing.

Keywords: interpretation, architectural design, design process

'Design processes' can mean different things to different
observers. It has been modelled in a variety of ways over
the last few decades by different researchers. A brief
overview of a model I subscribe to will provide the
contextual framework within which I wish to study
interpretation. My model describes the process in terms
of four entities: definition, or design imperatives; perso-
nalized program, or interpretation; independent inputs,
or design modifiers; physical form. 1
The definition has to do with the collection, recording
and arrangement of all relevant data, or knowledge,
concerning the task. An interpretation transforms the
definition into workable relationships among different
pieces of the givens, through structuring and by intro-
ducing the designer's own input. When such input is
completely extraneous to the definition and its role is one
of a catalyst in the creation of an interpretation, a design
modifier becomes part of the interpretation. Physical
form in various modes is present as representation of
information, a means of experimentation and inquiry,
and a test-tool for the confirmation or the rejection of
hypotheses (described as 'appearance' by John
Habraken2). In other words, it expresses and manipu-
lates both problems and solutions.
Interpretation is the hinge on which the entire process
is pivoted. In order to support this claim, I propose to
look at different aspects of the process of designing and
point out how they are related to interpretation. Seen in
this light, interpretation in designing can itself be
described as a process: the central process within a wider
activity of designing.
We need to assert the meaning of two terms. First,
knowledge: I use 'knowledge' here for all information and
data, all norms, belief-systems, requirements, wishes and

Vol 9 No 4 October 1 9 8 8 0142-694X/88/04235-11

$03.00 O 1988 Butterworth& Co (Publishers) Ltd 235
stylistic preferences a designer is aware of at any time
during the process of designing. Since the picture
changes while work is in progress, the body of knowledge
alters, too. Second, design move: to make a design move
means to act on knowledge. This may entail adding or
subtracting from the selective body of knowledge in use,
or changing the relationship among various items in-
cluded in it. Priorities, for example, are often transposed
during the process of designing. Any one design move
may bring about other moves in a chain reaction.
Interrelated moves are clustered in what I call chains of
moves. A design education is partially aimed at training
students to acquire the necessary competence and skill
which are required for the production of long chains of
moves.
STABLE STRUCTURES AND THE
COMBINATION LOCK METAPHOR
The process of interpretation is essentially an attempt to
select, transform and compose pieces of knowledge so as
to create a stable structure in which conflicts have been
largely removed or resolved. A stable structure acquires a
meaning beyond the additive sum of that of its parts. The
value of stability lies in the ability to regulate the
behaviour of the structure, although the regulation rules
usually remain at least partially tacit. Once stable, the
structure becomes specific or 'closed' (though its parts
maintain a high degree of lower-level freedom).
The act of selecting and composing pieces of informa-
tion resembles the use of a combination lock. When one
succeeds in combining (composing) a set of numerals in a
specific way (structure), the lock opens. Likewise, a
designer endeavours to arrive, through the making of
design moves, at a combination of pieces of knowledge
with a 'good fit' relationship among them. 3 When such a
combination is achieved a stable structure (interpreta-
tion) is created which 'closes' in the same way the
combination lock opens. For both the lock and the
interpretation, the key concept is that a particular
relationship among elements (often hierarchical) pro-
vides a solution to a problem. The enormous quantity
and complexity of pieces of knowledge in a design
situation explain the fact that so many interpretations are
simultaneously possible: like a multi-dimensional com-
bination lock, if one existed. It should be stressed,
however, that unlike the combination for a lock, in an
interpretation, which is a continuing process, there is
never a totally 'final' combination. It can grow, be
transformed, become part of a wider, more global
construct. The structure that generates it aspires to
achieve maximum stability: the equilibrium of its parts
seeks to rest on an ever wider supportive basis.
I hope to clarify these rather abstract notions through a
look at some case studies. Assuming that the process of
designing is inherent, 4 it is possible to observe interpreta-
tive processes in the work of designers of all ranks, not
necessarily only in designs by mature, experienced
architects. My examples are taken from work by three
236
ftrst-year architecture students, who went through com-
plete yet brief processes, which lend themselves to
scrutiny with relative ease.
THE CUBE EXERCISE
The two-week design exercise the students were pre-
sented with called for the fitting of a dwelling unit for a
pair of students into a 5m × 5m × 5m cubic volume. The
cube could be freely manipulated; pieces could be
subtracted and added, but a cube 'idea' was to remain.
After the designs were submitted (in form of three-
dimensional models) the students wrote accounts of the
processes they were involved in. Three of the works and
the matching accounts are the basis for our analysis
(three other icube exercises executed in the same class
were analysed by Eduardo Naisberg as part of his
Master's thesis, under the guidance of the authorS). I
shall describe the three diverse design trajectories so as to
be able to suPport my inferences regarding the role of
interpretation in their development (I used a comparison
between two :of the following cases, those of Ethel and
Gordon, to illustrate a discussion on extraneous inputs in
reference 6).
Ethel
Ethel was the youngest and least experienced student in
our sample. Always silent in class group-discussions, she
seemed quite overwhelmed by her first exposure to
design issues.
The first part of Ethel's design process is characterized
by an oscillation between a wish to manipulate the cube
so as to reach an 'exciting' volumetric composition
(Figure lc) and a need to be responsible about satisfying
the needs of her two tenants in the dwelling unit she had
to produce. Her three-dimensional compositional ex-
pectations remained vague and she could never explicitly
determine what it was that she was after: she wanted
excitement but could not quite figure out what exactly
would be considered exciting and why. She stated:
'Everyone wishes to exceed the usual and be exceptional
and o r i g i n a l . . . ' and believed at that point, that ' . . . in
any shape we choose we can find the appropriate
architectural "solution" for the structure we have cre-
ated'. Catering to the dwellers' needs, on the other
hands, was not all dubious. A typical, ordinary apart-
ment layout was a model she knew well enough and used
without any second thoughts.
When she felt that she could not satisfy her composi-
tional aspirations she built a case for abandoning them
(volume bigger than allowed, wasted corners) and
managed to find merit in staying with the unaltered cube
(Figure la,b): 'I had no choice but to remain with the
simple and original structure of the cube . . . excess of
originality makes it impossible to see the simple struc-
ture, which the eye grasps in an easier, less complicated
way. Undoubtedly the number of alternatives here is
very g r e a t . . . ' . She decided to 'stay with the original and
DESIGN STUDIES
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simple cube and the house's levels will be seen only in the
play of spaces inside'. She then concentrated on plans.
The concepts behind the plans she attempted were never
challenged and as it were, working out and drawing up
any kind of plans proved to be an assignment difficult
enough to require all of Ethel's time and attention
(Figure ld-g): 'Actually an ideal solution does not exist;
all we can do is to reduce the number of p r o b l e m s . . . ' .
Her earlier confidence in being able to find an 'appropri-
ate architectural solution' for any 'shape we choose'
proved to be somewhat premature.
Ethel had no drafting experience of any kind and the
conceptualization of three-dimensional spaces in two-
dimensional form was not easy for her even when she
limited her efforts to the production of plans for two
floors of a cubic house. She did not use the technique of
layering traces which was demonstrated in class several
times; we can conclude that much from the vertical
discontinuity of stairs in her drawings, for instance
(Figure lf, g). In fact, she did not use tracing paper at all,
presumably because she could not see any advantage in
doing so. Comments made in class regarding massing and
composition (the even distribution of windows on the
four walls of her model) had no effect on her and she
seemed both unable and unwilling to make an effort to
comprehend them. She was pleased with what she did
and what struck others as 'problematic' was to her a
reasonable consequence, or compromise, resulting from
having to deal with constraints. She made one design
move at a time, never doubted her decisions and realized
she was having difficulties with the medium (drawing,
models) only when inconsistencies were pointed out to
her.
Debby
Debby studied structural engineering for one year prior
to enrolling in architecture. She knew the drafting
conventions, but had never tried to use them for design
purposes. Like most other students in the class, she had
never made a model before.
Debby was emotionally involved in her work from the
very beginning. She started by adding 'fun' to the list of
requirements, although she could not articulate what
precisely she meant by that: 'I walked home with "fun"
echoing in my ears, but not succeeding in interlocking'.
The formulation of the exercise handout suggested to her
the decomposition of the cube, and she immediately
chose a strategy for doing so: subdividing the cube into
eight smaller cubes, then recomposing them in a new
way, while responding to all requirements. She used
Lego pieces to build eight small cubes and embarked on a
long attempt to combine them (Figure 2c). In this purely
sculptural-compositional effort it occurred to her at one
point that the cubes represent very small spaces, 2.5m x
2.5m x 2.5m each. She judged these dimensions too
small for components of a dwelling unit and decided to
merge pairs of cubes into 5m x 2.5m x 2.5m prisms, of
which she now had four. Endless time was spent
'playing', as she termed it, with her prisms, which she
238
treated much like she did the cubes before (Figure 2d)
The only criterion she used to evaluate her designs was
how pleasing she found the forms to be. That made it
impossible to reach any conclusions: 'I couldn't single
out any of the combinations as best or as possessing a
more thrilling, attractive form'. 'Playing' continued with
growing frustration and no progress until, under the
pressure of a deadline, she drew up some of the
combinations she had generated and graded them. The
emphasis in grading was on form, 'but I tried to also
incorporate some assessment of the functional possibili-
ties'. The added constraint eliminated several composi-
tions and 'this is how the form was selected'.
She stayed with that selection until the end of the
process, despite hesitations and uncertainties (Figure
2a,b,e). Feeling that her choice was a compromise which
she was neither in peace with nor loved, Debby
backtracked and started afresh. There is no documenta-
tion of those new attempts (all of Debby's drawings are
reconstructions she made while writing the account), but
she tells us she found fault with them because she
thought they resembled too much what other students
had presented in class. Her harsh self-criticism pushed
her back to the previous selection despite considerable
emotional involvement with the new designs: 'I already
fell in love, somewhat, and even got excited'.
Accepting her compromise, Debby decided to 'make
do with what there is and get the most out of it'. At that
point a new phase in the design process started, in which
she endeavoured to fit plans into the selected form, much
like Ethel did with the given form. She chose to start
with the stairs because she recognized they represented
potential difficulties. While trying out different con-
figurations, she made an important discovery: 'Suddenly
it occurred to me to give the stairs an importance beyond
that of transition from the lower level to the upper level'.
Satisfied with her discovery, she experimented with
different shapes of stairs and chose one which gave her,
in addition to the expected results, some advantages she
did not foresee, but which she became aware of while
testing the possibilities: '[this configuration] also enabled
me to play with the tall space which was created by
adding a light-strip along its entire height'.
The rest of the plan followed without major design-
events. The introduction of spatial hierarchy through her
personal preferences provided Debby with a local, yet
powerful interpretation, enabling everything that fol-
lowed to fall into place with relative ease.
Gordon
A son of an architect, Gordon was a skilled model-builder
(besides helping his father, he had worked in a model-
shop of a large architectural firm). His drafting skills
were minimal and according to his own testimony
(months after the exercise we are investigating) he used
to approach paper only when an idea was complete and
ripe in his head.
Like Debby, he started by decomposing the cube into
smaller cubes, but unlike her, he immediately looked for
DESIGN STUDIES
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Vol 9 No 4 October 1988 239

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240 DESIGN STUDIES

a recomposition rule for the putting together of the
smaller cubes. He too equipped himself with the small
model cubes to aid his search. His account of the design
process starts as follows: 'I wanted to make a form which
has its origin in the cube (as required by the exercise),
but which would break the cube's static state and create
some sort of movement - a spiral. I reached the general
idea by playing with match boxes . . .'. Match boxes,
however, are imperfect cubes and Gordon used sketches
to assert the geometric properties of his spiral (Figure
3c,d,e). All sketches were made in a single spell, and by
the time he was done, Gordon knew he had found what
he had been looking for.
Committed to his emerging design, he proceeded to
'work it out'. The sketches prove that he had a clear idea
of the layout from the very beginning: unlike Ethel and
Debby, 'form' and 'function' were not separate things in
his mind and he had no trouble thinking of them
simultaneously. The next phase for him was therefore
not one of 'fitting plans' to the form, but 'designing the
interior'. He never returned to paper and pencil: 'I did all
the rest of the work on interior design with a model, to
facilitate spatial conception' (Figure 3a,b). He decided
on two principal guidelines, or design criteria. First, 'not
to close the cubes with partition walls in order not to lose
the [visual] contact among the three spaces nor the effect
of the spiral movement'. Second, 'to assign to the
intermediate level the common facilities for the two
students and to the extreme levels their private spaces'.
These principles led to a host of design decisions
concerning the location of stairs and the main entrance,
heights of volumes and configuration of roofs. All were
determined following experiments with several alterna-
tives. A serious conflict was disclosed when it became
apparent that a common bathroom, if placed on the
intermediate level according to the second guideline,
would violate the visual continuity imperative pro-
claimed by the first guideline. Gordon gave priority to his
first principle and compromised on the second: 'I worked
hard in attempt to locate the bathroom on the intermedi-
ate level (as part of the second principle), but this would
have caused partitioning and would therefore have
violated the first principle too severely. Consequently,
each student has his own private bathroom, although this
was not the original intent'. By establishing priorities
Gordon introduced hierarchy into his design-frame, thus
structuring it.
Gordon's performance differs from that of Ethel and
Debby primarily in the length of chains of design moves
he was able to make. Particularly significant were the
moves which related evaluations to design criteria. He
was able to generate and implement them in a sophisti-
cated manner, by which I mean that his commitment to
them was unequivocal, yet flexible: had he been able to
resolve the bathroom problem on the intermediate level
with only a minor breach of a higher ranking rule, he
would have most likely done so.
Vol 9 No 4 October 1988
STARTING POINT: GLOBAL
INTERPRETATIONS
The verbal and written description of the task as given to
the students called for maintaining a 'cube idea'. The
cube, it was explained, could be added to or subtracted
from. What did a 'cube idea' mean to our designers:?
They obviously came to think of it in different ways, as
the results demonstrate. How can we understand their
varying interpretations of what the task meant? How did
they subordinate the option of 'undoing' the cube to their
global interpretations of the task?
To answer these questions we need to look at what
each of them did at the very beginning. The option of
taking the cube apart must have seemed compelling at
least, if not mandatory, as they all started this way
(interestingly, they all broke the cube into several parts
of equal form and dimensions). But at this stage already,
we notice irreconcilable differences in the reasons for and
the expectations from bisecting the cube. Ethel wanted to
do it because she thought it would lead her to 'exceed the
usual and be exceptional and original', which to her was
what 'everyone wishes'. To Debby, it seems, it never
occurred that leaving the cube in its 'simple and original'
state, to use Ethel's phrase, was a real possibility. The
exercise said you could add or subtract, but Debby read
should into 'could'. She never tried additional or optional
interpretations, even when disappointed with her results.
Apparently, she could not relate her failure to make
progress to an inadequacy of her departure points,
namely that the cube be decomposed into equal parts and
that those be reassembled in an attractive way. Ethel, on
the other hand, saw clearly that there was more than one
option. When she found that she was unable to capitalize
on the 'decompose-recompose' policy, she immediately
resorted to the only other possible interpretation she was
able to discern, one of preserving the 'simple and original
cube' (Ethel used the phrase 'simple and original cube'
several times in her brief account) and getting excitement
through 'the play of spaces inside'. Neither Ethel nor
Debby tried alternative approaches within the 'add-
subtract' paradigm (other than the attempts Debby tells
us about, but of which we have no evidence). Facing
failure, one of them abandoned it and the other
compromised her expectations. This is especially in-
teresting because both students were exposed to their
classmates' endeavours and the instructor's comments.
We do not know at this point whether an 'interpretative
space' is bounded, among others by a person's domain-
specific experience and the possession of a wide reper-
toire of plausible interpretations. I would argue that this
is at least partially true, as access to precedents makes it
easier to evoke metaphors, which, as suggested by
Sch6n, can be congenial to interpretations. 7 My observa-
tions show that novice designers sometimes use analo-
gies, but practically never metaphors, s
Gordon's starting point was more complex. He made a
series of interrelated design moves that amounted to the
specific interpretation which informed all the rest of his
work. Like his friends he decided to take the cube apart,
241
but not because it was mandatory nor because it seemed a
generally promising move towards success. He did it
because he objected to a particular property of the cube
as he saw it: its static state. The ability to identify this
property and form a stance on it made it possible to think
of a way to react to it. 'Movement' as suggested by a
spiral made of several spaces, or volumes, emerged as a
composite answer (movement plus a specific kind of
movement). If it were not for the match boxes, a
different answer may have been conceived. Small cubes
can be seen as originating in a bigger cube (as cubes,
being platonic forms, will always be kindred to other
cubes), thus satisfying the need to preserve a 'cube idea'.
A spiral cannot be described by less than three volumes
and Gordon sensed immediately that in terms of cubic
metres, the original cube could be divided into three
volumes for which appropriate plans could be worked
out. A quick calculation confirmed this feeling (Figure
3d).
The elements in Gordon's interpretation displayed the
'good fit' relationship among them, which lends stability
to the 'closed structures' they create. The sequence of
inferences may be changed and the individual elements
can withstand transformation (as indeed happened along
the process, as Gordon worked on his models) without
disruption to the global interpretation. If we return to the
model of the process of designing I introduced earlier, we
can say that the interpretation became possible because
Gordon personalized the programme: he transformed the
requirement to maintain a cube idea into a demand to
produce a form that has its origin in the cube. Movement
came in as an independent input that modified the task
definition. The volumatic spiral is a spatial expression of
that interpretation, although we have no way of knowing
whether it is a concluding end or a generating start of the
chain of inferences and reasoning that we refer to as
design moves. Debby thought of 'fun' in much the same
way as Gordon thought of movement, but was unable to
use this concept to modify the rest of her thinking on the
task, and it remained an isolated and powerless concept.
A careful hypothesis we can bring up at this point
maintains that like in the combination lock, a certain
minimum number of elements must come into interac-
tion as a threshold condition for the emergence of a useful
interpretation.
We do not discuss here the validity of Gordon's
interpretation, nor do we grade it in comparison with
Ethel's or Debby's interpretations. To what extent did
they maintain a 'cube idea'? (We would have to deal with
the question if we were to assess the designs as
architectural products, but since our interest lies with the
process and not the product, we shall avoid this query.)
My point here is that each of them, in his or her own
personal way, construed the demand to retain a cube idea
so as to give it enough meaning to generate design
intentions, which were expressed in design moves.
Gordon's interpretation, immediately form-related, was
the most complex and far reaching of the three, and it
dominated the entire sequence of design moves that
followed. However, all three cases illustrate cogently the
242
decisive role played by the point of departure in the
process of designing.
DISCOVERY
To what extent does a designer have to determine his or
her concerns and commitments ahead of time? Are all
design moves premeditated? The answer to both ques-
tions is obviously negative. Many interpretations result
from interests not embedded in task definitions and some
come to bear on a process at an advanced stage. What we
want to discuss here is how new design intentions and
commitments which do not stem directly from the
subject-matter and which are not on the designer's
agenda a priori, come into being and effect the process. I
contend that designers who experiment with their
material intensively enough encounter unexpected new
situations that lead them to see issues and problems in
new ways. When this happens the potential for making
discoveries becomes wide open.
Debby tells us about the discovery she made concern-
ing the stairs in her plan. She concentrated on them 'not
because they are the most important element, but
because I felt they were going to pose a certain problem'.
While attempting to frame that problem, by trying
different stair layouts, she discovered she could give the
stair much greater importance than she had done
hitherto. The general location of the stairs was fixed by
the fact that only at one place was there vertical overlap
among the three different levels of the structure. But
since the volume was small and all dimensions were
minimal, Debby was after the least space-consuming
solution. The idea to wave space conservation when it
comes to the stairs was completely novel and foreign to
any previous design concepts she entertained, except,
maybe, the wish for excitement and 'fun' (she never
made that connection). Her stair only led to two small
bedrooms and a bath, but with more experience and
access to references (such as a Renaissance 'grand stair'),
she might have developed a design interpretation which
rests on a large, graceful stair as a centerpiece of an
otherwise tight space.
Debby's discovery led to a sequence of design moves
which helped stablize her compromised interpretation of
the task and lent it credibility. The stair in its 'grander'
version resolved some functional problems (access to
mid-level) and added extra quality (lightwell), thus
reinforcing her solution with new layers of significance.
She made other, less fruitful, but probably not less
important discoveries. The change of scale in her basic
building block resulted from a discovery that her initial
tiny cubes describe spaces too small for any anticipated
use. The transformation from small cube to larger prism,
twice in floor area and different in geometrical prop-
erties, was not brought to full fruition in this project. But
it would be easy to demonstrate how it could have
become decisive, had Debby been able to incorporate
more design criteria into her search.
Gordon made a different kind of discovery, which he
DESIGN STUDIES
did not refer to as such. He found out that he could not
converge two of his design principles. One called for
leaving the cube's visual space uninterrupted, with no
partitions. The other suggested a bathroom, obviously
partitioned, right in the middle of that space. The
conflict resulted in a decision on priorities and in the
acceptability of compromise, an important discovery
regarding design intentions and expectations.
Whether Ethel made significant discoveries along the
process of designing, is hard to determine. We could
possibly describe her realization that she was unable to
materialize the 'deformed' cube dream as a discovery.
The line between discovery and realization can some-
times be fine indeed. But she outlined two options at the
very beginning, and the quick withdrawal to the safer
grounds of the unaltered cube, suggests despair rather
than discovery. Nowhere else in Ethel's work or her story
do we find anything that can be referred to as discovery.
PLAY
Interestingly, Ethel is also the only one in our sample
who did not use the verb play to describe her activities.
She did use the word as a noun several times and so did
Debby. But Debby used it mainly as a verb, and Gordon
exclusively so.
The word 'play', both as noun and verb, is often used
in discussion of architecture and designing. As a noun
meaning excitement, interest and contrast, 'play' is used
in the visual arts, the performing arts and literature. One
of the famous examples in architecture is Le Corbusier's
definition: 'Architecture is the skillful, correct and
magnificent play of volumes assembled in light'. 9 When
Ethel talks about the 'play of lines', 'a play of levels' or 'a
play of spaces inside', she has in mind something akin to
what Le Corbusier thought of. The same is true for
Debby, when she explains the advantage of her new stair
layout by saying: ' . . . and [the landings] also provide
play in the high s p a c e . . . ' . This is interesting, but in no
way unique to design. I should therefore like to take a
closer look at how play is used as a verb; in our samples,
mostly as 'playing'.
How is playing related to design moves, to discovery,
and therefore to interpretation? The generic relationship
between play and creative endeavour has attracted the
attention of many psychologists, yet we still know little
about it. Freud related day dreaming, which he saw as a
prerequisite for imaginative writing, to playing. He talks
about 'the hypothesis that imaginative creation, like day
dreaming, is a continuation of and substitute for the play
of childhood'. Elsewhere in the same text he says: ' . . .
the writer does the same as a child at play, he creates a
world of fantasy which he takes very seriously; that is, he
invests it with a great deal of effect, while separating it
sharply from reality'. 10 The notion of a created world of
fantasy, which is sharply separated from reality, is of
great interest. Contemporary Constructivists such as
Nelson Goodman 11 and Jerome Bruner 12 emphasize the
role of specialized, relative, micro-worlds in the making
Vol 9 No 4 October 1988
of things, particularly in art and literature. Donald Sch6n
talks about 'design worlds', virtual in nature, within
which design activities take place, ~3 and I have shown
elsewhere that such virtual worlds tend to be surrogate in
the case of design by children, s For children design is
indeed play, while adults 'play' when designing, in the
sense that 'reality' as represented in their knowledge
about the task at hand does not off-hand provide design
ideas or interpretations; to construct interpretations the
designer must break away from that preordained reality
and replace it with a relative reality, or world, which
sustains his or her attempts to construe the task. Play, in
this sense, signifies search. I believe I can support this
hypothesis with examples from Gordon's and Debby's
cases.
Gordon describes as play what he was doing when first
hunting for an appropriate concept: 'I reached the
general idea by playing with match boxes'. Likewise,
Debby tells us what she did with her Lego cubes: ' I . . .
combined pairs of cubes and started playing with
prisms'. Unlike Gordon her play did not yield the
expected outcome; playing as an activity is independent
of consequences. Debby continues her description by
reporting: 'The number of options decreased; however a
whole day elapsed with me still playing'. When her play
proved to lead nowhere, she was forced to stop and make
an arbitrary decision. Her account of that instant states:
'I had little choice but to put an end to the search'.
Debby literally uses 'play' and 'search' as synonyms. In
the general process of interpretation in designing,
playing means the conducting of 'loose' experiments,
whose purpose is to elicit hypotheses that are sensible
enough to make it possible to switch to 'tighter', or
controlled experiments, in order to confirm or discon-
firm the hypotheses. Play-search experiments in design-
ing always take place in the visual domain and their
success depends on the designer's ability to perceive,
represent, transform and manipulate physical form (what
Howard Gardner calls 'spatial intelligence' 14), on the way
to what I refer to as an interpretation.
Finally, I would like to assess the meaning of 'play' in
designing in terms of Piaget's definitions. He discerns
three principal categories of play (Exercise play, Symbo-
lic play and Games with rules). There is also 'a fourth
[category], which serves as a transition between symbolic
play and non-playful activities or "serious" adaptions
. . . out of symbolic play there develop games of
construction, which are initially imbued with play
symbolism, but tend later to constitute genuine adap-
tions (mechanical constructions, etc) or solutions to
problems and intelligent creations. 15 The fourth category
fits our case very well and it seems to me that a lot is to be
gained by taking a close look at the role of playing in
designing. A more thorough investigation is, unfortu-
nately, beyond the scope of this discussion.
INTERPRETATIONS REVISITED
We have seen how critical the formation of an interpreta-
243
tion at the outset of a design effort can be. We have also
observed how discovering new ways of seeing situations
in mid-process can help consolidate a design proposition
by giving it, or part of it, a new interpretation. We
happen to not have, in our limited sample, an example of
radical transformations at an advanced stage of design-
ing, but we are aware that, admittedly somewhat rarely,
they do occur in professional practice. I would like to
conclude by reinforcing these claims with vignettes from
testimony by authoritative architectural and musical
practitioners and with philosophical commentary.
As part of a research project I am involved in, I
recently had a conversation with Mario Botta about his
design attitudes and habits. He was presented with an
outline of a small (fictional) building with six optional
entry points and was asked to work out the implications
of these entrances. He was uneasy with the request, more
so than half a dozen other experienced architects who
were asked to do the very same thing. He explained his
reservations: 'I am very embarrassed, because my
process is normally linked to a spatial idea. Here,
everything is possible. If you tell me to enter here - I will
give [you] a solution. If you tell me to enter there - I will
give another solution. It is difficult for me to choose; I do
not think it is the architect's objective to choose the best
conditions. On the contrary, I think all conditions are
good. One has to reinterpret them each t i m e . . . '
He talked for a long time about the predominance of
spatial ideas, or rather a single spatial idea as the source
of every design: 'Normally when I have to control a
space, I look for a guiding reference mark, I must have a
spatial idea'. To further explain what he meant, he told
the story of one design project and how it came into
being. He was invited to design a new church in a village
in Northern Italy which was badly hit by an avalanche
that destroyed the old church along with many other
buildings: ' . . . So from the beginning my biggest
concern was of course to get to know the situation, to
start a dialogue with the situation, with the site. But after
that first a c q u a i n t a n c e . . , the critical reading of a site is
already the first act of the project . . . When you have
read the situation critically, you immediately have the
project in your h e a d . . . I went to see that situation [the
village], and then in memory, I had the houses of the
village in mind, [and] I made a first sketch. Intuitively.
Then I worked for six months, I forgot it [the sketch]
completely. I worked for six months on this idea of
houses and I did the entire project, I made a model, I
made the spaces, and like a miracle, at the end of the
project, it is exactly like the first sketch I had made. I
find this fantastic. I have completely forgotten! Other
constraints about which I had known nothing in advance
came into play: materials, price, organization etc. But at
the end the result i s . . . ' and he laughed. To my question
whether this happens to him often, he replied: 'Almost
always'.
Botta's case provides us with an unusually lucid
example of how dominant an initial interpretation can be.
But it also elaborates on the nature of interpretation in
architectural design. The site is an all important factor; it
244
is the situation that one is invited to assimilate, to
appropriate, by interpreting it. Each situation and every
condition requires a new interpretation. Interpreting a
situation means taking a critical reading of it. By 'critical
reading', I think, Botta means the identification of salient
features and their combination into a coherent spatial
picture, which invites a particular intervention. From
there almost everything else can flow.
Let us now draw our attention to mid-course discover-
ies that completely transform the picture. My example is
taken from the domain of music, as I think processes of
musical composition resemble those of architectural
designing. To design and to compose seems to me to be
almost entirely synonymous. The composer Luciano
Berio offers the following introspective commentary,
relating in particular to his various Allelujah, Sequenza
and Chemins pieces: 'One way or another, during the
planning, the execution and the definition of details [of a
musical composition], it happens that new possibilities
reveal themselves and new relationships are discovered,
upon which I decide to tarry without changing the
character and the logic of the original plan . . . In the
process of the realization of a comprehensive project,
during the definition of details, as I said before - it may
also happen that the new discovery and the abundance of
the unexpected [details] become so important that the
plan must be changed. 16
Like Botta, Berio gives an example to illustrate his
abstract narrative. But this time we are looking at a
metaphor and not at an episode from his practice. He
likens composing to the taking of a trip to a foreign land.
One may plan the voyage, prepare for it, learn about sites
to be visited, etc. But to be truly successful the trip must
include unanticipated stops, changes of route, itinerary
and means of travel. New details must be paid attention
to as they become discernible. Discoveries, big and
small, lend the trip its richness and flavour. Ila
architectural as in musical composition, when there are
enough newly defined details, a new global picture may
emerge.
The interpretative processes described by Botta and
Berio seem incongruous with one another at first, but
they do not necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. It
is true that certain designers (in architecture, music and
other domains) have overriding tendencies to start with a
'strong' interpretation which they preserve intact, while
others build it up little by little as they go along and are
wide open to change. It is also possible, however, to do
both. We must fine-tune our tools and attend to the
subtlest transformation in order to understand the
emergence, the growth and the maturation of interpreta-
tions as well as their diminution, displacement or
disappearance. To do that we must treat interpretation as
a process. I know of no finer description of this process
than Wittgenstein's, which is as convincing as it is brief
(we may bear in mind that he studied architecture): ' . . .
By "intention" I mean here what uses a sign in a thought.
The intention seems to interpret, to give the final
interpretation, which is not a further sign or picture, but
something else - the thing that cannot be further
DESIGN STUDIES
interpreted . . . What happens is not that this symbol
cannot be further interpreted, but: I do no interpreting. I
do not interpret, because I feel at home in the present
picture. When I interpret, I step from one level of
thought to another. 17
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