Design Is.....

I have a T-shirt with its front printed "Design Is" while its back printed "A Better Idea". This is how we have been taught as designers, to always come out with something new. But is design only about that? There will be those days that we keep scratching our head trying to figure out how to put our pens down the butter paper in order to solve problems. We keep on pressuring ourselves that we are going to design the next award winning buildings. However, we end up staring at a blank sheet of butter paper most of the time. Perhaps if we don’t focus so much on making a breakthrough, wouldn’t that make us feel better. The problem lies in us focusing too much on trying to be different from other people.

Philip Johnson, an internationally acclaimed American architect once said that he just want to be second best, not the best one. And I think he got a point there. If we think about it deeper, design is actually about solving problems. If we are designing an apartment unit, the problem is how can we design a conducive living space. Besides solving problems, design is also about making the decision which we think are right on that particular moment. The reason I said this is because there is no right or wrong in design, any design we create is justifiable depending on the particular angle one looks at.