Between One and One Another

Design emerges through interactions with clients. It is also centrally shaped through interactions with others in the office. The “Friday review” is the weekly slot where designs are discussed by the whole practice. During one of these sessions, Ronan is presenting ideas he has been working on. He starts by explaining the brief, which is simple: there is a house at the head of a wooded valley; the house doesn’t make the most of its site and isn’t well adapted to the needs of the clients who live in it, a middle-aged couple with older children. He notes, in passing, that they own the local builders merchants, a detail that is not elaborated but, in the absence of a fixed budget, seems intended to convey the likelihood the budget will be generous. He illustrates the site with plans and maps, gesturing and pointing as he talks. As he describes what he shows, he shuffles and rearranges papers, moving between a map of the site, plans of the building, and images of the site. What Ronan shows through this description is a building on a steep slope, “marooned” at the edge of a large plot. The views are “fantastic,” but windows and rooms are configured so that the views are rarely seen. The existing building is “uninspiring.” Ronan shows us some of his ideas. My untrained eyes focus on the elegant tidiness of his pencil sketches, but Ronan doesn’t see this: looking at his plans and sketches, he is looking at an idea that doesn’t quite work, a solution he can’t yet see....