Try, Try Again - Brief Article

I used to think that the really brilliant and famous of this world were different from you and me because they did things right the first time. Working at a distinguished architectural firm with accomplished architects, I finally learned what the real differences are.

As project secretary, I watched the design for a building complex take shape on the desks of thirty architects. One of the firm's partners had created the design concept, and the staff was working out the plans down to exact details of flooring and banister styles. The work advanced, supervised by the senior architect in charge of the project. The deadline was imminent but manageable.

Team architects drew the concept into a two-dimensional reality, while assistants measured, cut, and glued thin foamboard to create a model complete with green areas, roadways, sponge-bowered trees, and tiny cars. Then the senior architect visited each project area, accompanied by the design architect. The following morning the team architects puttered at their desks while a meeting went on in the conference room where the key architects sat around a narrow black table with the model in the center. That afternoon brought a general meeting. The outcome of it all was--revision.

Now the pace picked up; the architects worked overtime and under pressure to make the changes. Review was constant. "Didn't you finish that plan yesterday?" I asked someone working on the same plan again. Yes, but it had been revised, was the answer, and the tone of voice made it clear it could be revised many more times. I don't know if the architects were pushed beyond their limits reworking the plans, but they were pushed. What distinguished the really good architects was precisely a willingness to revise, rework, redo.

I was particularly interested in the building's central courtyard, to be made of specially cut stone arranged in an intricate pattern. A young architect worked on the courtyard drawing for months. Each time he achieved what seemed the epitome of design elegance, the concept architect would come by, make changes, and push it further.

Day by day, the deadline neared. Individual areas were revised and revised again. While some of the changes were mandated by the owners or were determined by the availability of materials, others seemed part of an ongoing process of clarification and refinement. After an intense weekend of round-the-clock work, the plans were finally sent off for review. For a few days the fog-eyed architects stayed home or came in late. This was only the first stage, however. The next set of plans had to be readied, so the entire process was repeated: more revisions, more plans redone, over and over again.

If witnessing this procedure wasn't enough to disabuse me of the idea that architectural ideas spring perfectly formed from the heads of brilliant people, then working with the architects on letters, lists, even memos, did. A large part of my work consisted of turning handwritten drafts into perfect final products. The same zest for revision dominated all work given to me by the architects. Could this paragraph be phrased better? Was that item really correct? Double check it. Rewrite. The documents were reviewed by others and their suggestions incorporated--often into what I had thought was the finished product. Even in the hands of Federal Express a document was not safe from revision.

Detail was treated with reverence. Thick books of specifications went out with each set of drawings. The sheer mass of quantitative detail was numbing, but necessary to the material expression of the design's fine points: the shape of the buildings' corners against the sky, the feel of an open area, the exact tones of the facing under the sun in that geographical location, the size of pebbles for the walkways, the sound of water in a semi-enclosed space. The royal path from imagination to reality is paved with details.

Besides learning to respect the powers of revision and developing a passion for detail, there were other lessons I learned. The supervising architect had the uncanny habit of appearing at just the moment something less than correct was happening. He seemed to have a connection with the project that drew him to any disorder, whether it was the result of distraction, oversight, or conscious decision. I learned to predict when he would appear.

The other lesson came in a flash as I looked at the final project drawings. What I saw--when I stopped thinking of courtyard, stairways, walls, entrances and elevator shafts--was a harmoniously balanced design, delicately drawn and beautiful. It was perfect in itself, like an old hand-drawn map valued for its artistic attributes as much as for the city it traces out. The architectural plan as drawing had a mandala-like quality: It seemed to invite me into the experience of a larger design.

The real difference between the brilliant and the famous and the rest of us is the set of qualities that precedes the fame: a willingness to review and revise, to settle for nothing less than perfection, a limitless capacity for attention to detail, and a deep caring that cables a connection to the work. Then there's something about working outward from--or is it inward toward--an absolutely perfect and beautiful inner design.