minus 41 brewery
This was my most frustratingly unrealized design project, but it was also the most educational because it taught me crucial lessons that I could only learn through failure.
My studio was tasked with designing a brewery in Minneapolis that shared a building with an AA group, which was required to intersect with the small island seen below. We learned much about the brewing process, but I learned much more about my own flaws. What follows are pieces of work taken from 3 wholly different designs for a brewery, as well as the insights I have since gathered about the design profession and myself.
This was my first design concept, which I quickly moved away from. My professor pushed me to explore other more challenging forms, and it felt too similar to another project I had done previously.
This was my second iteration. It pushed me far outside my comfort zone, as I had to learn some Grasshopper in order to model it. I was initially very intrigued by the formal exploration and the dramatic renders, but I became stuck a few weeks into the process and the weeks that followed were filled with very hard work but not much progress.
15 weeks after beginning the project, my professor told me that I had taken this idea as far is it would go (which to be honest is at least 5 weeks after I knew it myself, but I refused to let go). With only 5 weeks or so left until final review, I decided to throw it all out and start from scratch (which was a terrible idea). I am proud of this concept and I wish that I’d had the time to fully realize it. The focal point of this concept was a massive cantilevered steel truss that extended over the Mississippi River and housed the brewery’s restaurant.
These are the things I learned throughout this project, about both design and myself.
1. I had developed a need for validation. At every step of the way, I was seeking reassurance from my professor that I was moving in a good direction and not wasting my time. It reached the point where I was completely ignoring my own intuition and relying solely on my professors direction, which is one reason I waited so long to drop my second iteration. If I was ever going to be a good designer, or a good anything for that matter, I needed to learn to trust and follow my own instincts.
2. Beyond trusting their instincts, an architect needs the ability to quickly make decisions and follow through on them. Mental agility is required to know when to work through an idea and when to drop it in favor of something better. There is a time for making a design pivot, but knowing if that time has passed is a crucial skill. In other words, know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em. Had I possessed this skill, I would have changed gears much earlier (or not changed at all).
3. Working hard and working smart are not the same thing. Working smart means considering not just the design but also how you will communicate it throughout the entire process. I spent far more time trying to develop the idea of the project (my digital model and floor plans) than I did developing the documents that would ultimately communicate it in a persuasive way (renders, sections, diagrams). An idea is not worth much if you can’t communicate it effectively. During the schematic phase of a project (which is also most of design school) it’s more important to have a broad strokes design communicated well than a very detailed design that exists largely in your mind. An architect must have stellar communication skills.
4. My body and mind have limits. The more I prioritize work over my physical and mental health, the worse my work becomes. During this project, I found those limits.
5. I had a fear of the process, driven by perfectionism. A designer needs to be able to iterate quickly and prevent themself from getting stuck in design ruts. In order to do this, they need to do quick work and show themselves that an idea works or doesn’t. Thinking about an idea a lot is not the same as working through it. Working through it requires actual work. I had a fear of wasting my time, and so I was reticent to make time-consuming models or floor plans or renders before an idea was 100% rock solid. Seeing these things as illustrations of my idea rather than design tools that provoked new ideas prevented me from acting. A good designer is constantly working through their hands because they know that by doing so they can discover new ways to approach the design, ways that can’t be revealed by simply thinking about something.
6. Using the right tools can make a big difference. At this point, I had not discovered software (such as Vectorworks or Revit) that allows you to easily design models at the same time you are designing plans and sections and elevations. I was using a basic 3D modeling software for EVERYTHING, including making floor plans. This probably contributed to my extreme aversion to any wasted time, because making a floor plan in Rhino was extremely time consuming. My workflow had deficiencies and my work suffered.